Leaders

Sharie Bowman, MA is a Mental Health Counselor and Regional InterPlay Leader. She has been leading InterPlay since 2004 and has co-led four Life Practice Programs. She is particularly intrigued with the potential InterPlay has to support people to create healthier lives by following the wisdom of their bodies and taking the lead in their own lives. In her private practice she regularly weaves InterPlay’s life-enhancing forms and philosophies to help individuals and families thrive. For over 20 years, she has been exploring the wisdom of the body through a variety of modalities including InterPlay, Authentic Movement, Core-Energetics, and Biodynamic Psychotherapy.

Deanna Murray discovered more than ten years ago the value of InterPlay in her life as a woman, as a minister, and as a spiritual director. Deanna began participating in a weekly playgroup in Minneapolis. Since that time, she moved to the Seattle area and is now a graduate of the Seattle-based InterPlay Leadership Program. She says, "InterPlay is a life giving spiritual practice which brings me into the 'moment', opens me to a playful approach to life, and grounds me in my own body wisdom." Deanna has been playing with the tools of InterPlay since 1995, leading small and large groups, introducing movement and play in retreat settings, and inviting embodiment in worship. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, a spiritual director and a local pastor of a renewing congregation on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Often Deanna leads play groups at WomanSpirit, a lovely retreat center on Cougar Mountain in Issaquah, Washington.

Ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ in 1988 Laurie has served as Pastor of Queen Anne Christian Church in Seattle since 1991.

In 1995 she began leading InterPlay classes in Seattle. In 1997 she created SpiritPlay (melding InterPlay with worship forms and spiritual practice) for clergy, spiritual leaders and seekers. Since then she has taught Secrets of InterPlay and the InterPlay Leadership Program.

Laurie loves to write, weave, sing, weed her garden, read, create prayer beads, and design large scale church art.

In addition to her work as Pastor, Laurie also serves at Seattle University as liturgical coordinator for seminary students of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) attending the School of Theology and Ministry.

Betsey Beckman, MM is nationally acclaimed as liturgical dancer, storyteller, teacher of SpiritPlay and dancing Spiritual Director. With her extensive background in performance, movement therapy, ministry and InterPlay, she is regularly featured as artist/presenter at national conventions as well as local churches. Betsey’s most recent publications integrate InterPlay in a variety of ways. Her DVD The Dancing Word: Mary Magdalene, features a participatory InterPlay workshop breaking open the story of Mary Magdalene, and her co-authored book, Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction, offers numerous InterPlay exercises for integrating into soul-care ministries. Betsey offers the gift of playful improvisation whenever possible!

Julia McKay, MA, MDiv is a cultural creative who readily draws on her 30 years of life-experience as a Unitarian Universalist minister, music educator, psychotherapist, activist, and InterPlay leader. Julia was trained in Oakland, CA (2004-05) by the founders of InterPlay and has been enthusiastically incorporating InterPlay forms into a wide variety of workshops and retreats ever since. Julia is most passionate about freeing the soul by providing opportunities for people to live from their authentic nature and bring their innate gifts forward to serve the world. Julia believes that InterPlay?s powerful and holistic body-centered life practices are essential to enhancing our deepest ways of knowing.

<.When I feel what Interplay has done for me I must say that in my heart I am freer to be in my body and use it to express the fullness of life that abounds within me. I didn't know what potential there is to have fun with anything that comes my way in whatever form it appears. Improvisation is the way to live and I'm learning through my experience with the Interplay community that seeing the positive in everything just makes total sense to my heart. It makes me happy. Interplay is a great adjunct to Sacred Clowning. Both forms lend themselves to the present moment in the process of trusting that all I ever really need in any given moment is right here within me. Interplay greases my intuitive wheels so that when I clown I can forget my plans and flow into whatever feeling presents itself with the cofidence that it will lead me to the source of my true nature. This is what makes the clowning sacred. Thank you for coming into my life. In all sincerity, steven

Krista Gemmell Harris has an M.F.A. in Dance and is certified in both Laban Movement Analysis and InterPlay. Authentic Movement and Insight Meditation also inform and enrich her life and work.

Krista has been leading InterPlay since 1993. She helped create the InterPlay community in Seattle and the Regional Leadership Program. Teacher, mentor, and performer, she has spent over thirty years helping people of all ages discover the joy of being a body. In recent years, Krista has been an advocate for deepening the experience of stillness in InterPlay. In June of 2006, she retired from being a Regional Leader and is exploring new directions in her personal and professional lives.

Ingrid Hurlen is a Certified InterPlay Leader (since 1997) and Creative Dance teacher/workshop facilitator. She has a BA in Drama from Lone Mountain College. With InterPlay Seattle founder, Krista Harris, she co-led two InterPlay leadership programs. She currently teaches parent/child and preschool creative dance classes at the Creative Dance Center, Dance Fremont and workshops for early childhood educators at Edmonds Community College. She also is cultivating Dance for People with Parkinson's classes with Anne Green Gilbert at the Creative Dance Center. She is also an experienced dance and theater performer. She produced the 2000 Seattle "Unbelievable Beauty of Being Human" concert with Wing It! Performance Ensemble and over 40 InterPlayers from around the country. After a seven year hiatus, she is joyful to return to leading and playing in the InterPlay Seattle community!

Sheila McCarthy has been a certified InterPlay leader since 2002. Sheila has a diverse background in theater, dance, exercise physiology, and various other movement arts, including Creative Dance and the BrainDance. Sheila has over 20 years of experience teaching in the health and fitness industry; encouraging the rediscovery of the body’s natural movements, rhythms, desires, and response to pleasure. Sheila believes PLAY, (especially the irreverent kind) is essential for a life long commitment to better health and well being,

Elizabeth Mendana, MFA, is a member of the InterPlay-based Wing It! Performance Ensemble in Oakland, CA and is an international InterPlay leader and performer. She is versed in dance, theatre, and stage wisdom with a special gift for caring about people and art at the same time. The San Francisco Chronicle has called her dancing "Stunning" and "Hypnotic". She has performed with several San Francisco choreographers as well as presenting her own creative work with her company Mendana Productions. She has recently relocated to Seattle where she hopes to continue creating performance art, teach Pilates, and make a home.

Harriet is nurturing relationships and spaces for curiosity, play, and reflection! Curiosity abounds...at home, at work providing spiritual care as a chaplain, in her faith community, with her friends and playmates! For 12 years she's been InterPlaying, leading/teaching/applying this embodied system since 2004. She's in her element when she's harmonizing on some vocal riff, or side by side weaving a story. She loves to listen and learn with others, through collaborations addressing sustainable work/life practices, and artful inquiry supporting ongoing spiritual development. For more information, see harrietplatts.com.

Diana teaches theatre at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington where she sneaks InterPlay into all of her classes. An award-winning director, Diana specializes in InterPlay for Performance, and has taught classes and workshops in Performance Techniques, InterPlay Storytelling and Speech-making, and InterPlay for Social Change. She is a gifted InterPlay story-teller who performs Big Body Stories wherever the opportunity presents itself, and is also a member of Spokane's Ashe Dance & Drum Ensemble,

Previously the artistic director of the urban outreach program, Moving in the Spirit , Leah Mann now co-directs Lelavision Physical Music . With her partner Ela Lamblin, she tours internationally, performing a hybrid genre combining kinetic music inventions animated through music and dance in simultaneity. She teaches movement, rhythm and instrument making from ordinary objects with a wide variety of populations from a base of improvisation informed primarily by the InterPlay technique.