Organizers - PPLG - Play Perform Learn Grow

PPLG 2021 Organizers

ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI

EAST SIDE INSTITUTE
New York

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF MUSIC STUDIES
FACULTY OF FINE ARTS – ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY

LESVOS SOLIDARITY

ODYSSEAS – LESVOS

ANAMUH – Arts for Dialogue

EPINEIO

UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY
DEPARTMENT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

PPLG 2021 Chairs

Click on the profile pictures for further details

Elena Boukouvala is a dramatherapist (MA), counsellor of children and young people (MA) psychologist and a community organizer. She is a PhD researcher of Sociology at Open University (UK) researching enacting citizenship through creative methods. She is teaching Laban, Movement with Touch and facilitates therapy groups for trainee therapists at the postgraduate course of Dramatherapy at Epineio Institute (Thessaloniki). She is also faculty of East Side Institute (New York). She founded PPLG in 2017 with the ongoing support of an international community as a response to refugee policy crisis and the dehumanizing conditions of refugee camps. As dramatherapist, trainer, psychologist, performance activist and artist, she has worked in schools, hospitals, prisons, rehabilitation wards, elderly homes, refugee camps and other community settings in collaboration with social initiatives and international organizations in Greece, UK, Romania, Germany, Hungary, Serbia, Moldova, Lebanon, Algeria (Western Sahrawi camps) and USA. She has also created trainings and consultancies cooperating with organizations such as the International Organization for Migration. She has founded the international interactive exhibition “Dialogues Across Borders” (DAB) which has travelled across Europe, building on poetry and art of the participants and creating opportunities for dialogue and spaces of belonging. During the pandemic she has been researching, teaching and working as a therapist online.

Elena Boukouvala

Founder and Director of PPLG
Dramatherapist, Psychologist, Faculty of East Side Institute and Epineio Institute, PhD researcher Open University, UK, Greece, USA

Dan Friedman is the artistic director and co-founder of the Castillo Theatre as well as the associate dean of UX, a free community-based school of continuing development for people of all ages, both programs of the All Stars Project in New York City. He also serves on the faculty of the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy and is a lead organizer of Performing the World, a bi-annual conference that brings together performance activists, artists and scholars from all over the world. A playwright, director, and grassroots educator, Friedman holds a doctorate in theatre history from the University of Wisconsin and has been active in political theatre and performance activism since the 1960s. He is the author or co-author of 17 full-length plays and is editor of The Cultural Politics of Heiner Muller (Cambridge Scholars Press); Still on the Corner and Other Post-Modern Political Plays by Fred Newman (Castillo); and co-editor of Theatre for Working Class Audiences in the US, 1830-1980 (Greenwood Press). He is currently working on a new book for Palgrave Macmillan, Performance, Human Development and Social Change: Creating Community Creativity.

Dan Friedman

Artistic Director Emeritus of Castillo Theatre, Associate Dean at UX, USA

Trained as a developmental psychologist and psycholinguist, Lois Holzman has chosen to live her life as an activist who uses her academic background and experience to organize people—as individuals and communities—to participate in creating their development and in so doing, to create hope and new possibilities. She founded the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy in the 1980s with philosopher and therapist Fred Newman. Over the decades the Institute has grown into an international educational, training and research center for Social Therapeutics and other alternatives to the natural science-medical model of psychology, psychotherapy and education (www.eastsideinstitute.org). She is also the chair of the biannual conference ‘Performing The World’ (www.performingtheworld.org) happening in New York since 2001. Much of her work is building partnerships that bring the best of grassroots practices into conversation with the most innovative of academic scholarship, and giving support to community educators and activists worldwide in their efforts to make the world more humane. Among her books are Vygotsky at Work and Play; Psychological Investigations: A Clinician’s Guide to Social Therapy; The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning; and the forthcoming The Overweight Brain: How Our Obsession with Knowing Keeps Us From Getting Smart Enough to Make a Better World. She blogs at loisholzman.org, Psychology Today, and Mad in America.

Lois Holzman

Developmental Psychologist, International teacher and writer, Director of East Side Institute, USA

Maria Rantzou is a graduate of the Theological Faculty of the School of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the School of Education of the Department of Primary Education of the University of Western Macedonia. She has completed a two-year distance program of Counseling Psychology from the Derby University of England. She successfully attended the postgraduate course of the Department of Theology with specialization in Pedagogy. After receiving a scholarship from the Diakonisches Werk section of the Evangelical Church and from the Kultusministerium in the Bavarian State of Germany, she attended studies at the Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Orthodox Theological School of Munich. Her studies were completed with specialization in the context of mental support of patients and prisoners. Maria has presented in various international conferences. She was appointed Ph.D. of Theological School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki specialized in Pedagogy. She has taught Pedagogy and Psychology at ASPΑITE Thessaloniki and worked at the private school of KALAMARI-ADAMANTIOS SCHOOL of Thessaloniki. She currently serves as Assistant Professor at the School of Religious Studies at the Theological Faculty of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Maria Rantzou

Assistant Professor of Religious Education, School of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

PPLG 2021 Production and Management

Click on the profile pictures for further details

Francesco Argenio Benaroio is a participatory theatre practitioner, IT engineer, project manager. He has lived and worked in various contexts around the globe, for the United Nations, European Commission, private sector, education institutions, NGOs and grassroots organizations.

Formerly Training Manager for the International Labour Organization for the organization and management of governmental international training events in Latin America, UN Programme Officer, Grant Manager for Open Society Foundations for Higher Education support in Asia, IT Project Manager for European Space Agency programs, public school teacher.

Francesco for the past 15 years has been working as project manager and facilitator with marginalized communities, especially youth (refugees, displaced, IDP, Roma), in formal education settings (school, university) and non-formal contexts (communitarian centres, education NGOs for refugees, intercultural centres), in Europe (Hungary, Greece), Latin America (Colombia), Asia (Nepal, India, border Myanmar-Thailand).

Francesco is the founder and director of “ANAMUH – Arts for Dialogue” (www.anamuh.org), organizing and facilitating grassroots activities and open trainings with participatory arts.

During the Pandemic he has been facilitating groups online, exploring challenges and also new possibilities.

Francesco Argenio Benaroio

PPLG Production Manager and International Outreach

Participatory Theatre Practitioner, Founder of ANAMUH – Arts for Dialogue, Greece, Italy and Hungary

Elena Boukouvala

Founder and Director of PPLG

Dramatherapist, Psychologist, Faculty of East Side Institute and Epineio Institute, PhD researcher Open University, UK, Greece, USA