EDUCATION:

Shamanic Healing - 12 months - Sedona, AZ (2007-10)
with Jade Wah'oo
http://www.shamanic.net

Medicinal Aromatherapy Massage (25 CE) 2008
with Robin Michaels
http://www.cosmicessentialoils.com

BIO:

Kate is the creator of Performing Wellness ™, the renowned process that uncovers and releases the creative ‘wild child’ muse, shares those stories in public performance and promotes healing. She has facilitated and produced more than 8 Performing Wellness productions. She has worked with individuals living with cancer, HIV/Aids, Multiple Sclerosis, Rape and Sexual Abuse, and war-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She also offers support for individuals and families on the journey of dying.

Kate was trained at Duke University as a consultant with the Society for Arts In Healthcare (www.theSAH.org). Until Dec 2007 she was a long time Adjunct Faculty at Linfield College, both the main campus and the Linfield-Good Samaritan Nursing school. She taught and directed in the Theatre Department, developed and taught a new Arts and Wellness Course and delivered a Faculty Lecture on Arts and Wellness, its history and role in our lives today.

In 2000 Kate was a Co-Founder, and until 2007, Artistic Director of the Well Arts Institute in Portland, Oregon. During the first 4 years of the Well Art’s development, she served as Executive/Artistic director and led the group from a small entirely volunteer organization to one with paid staff and accompanying Board Development and Long Term Strategic Planning. She coordinated and developed the artistic programming, facilitated all Performing Wellness productions and was the lead grant writer.

Other experience includes Education/Outreach Director and Artistic Associate at Artists Repertory Theatre where she developed the education program over 10 years. As a playwright her credits include Composers In Skirts, (a commissioned touring piece) and Singing Our Way Home for The Tears of Joy Theatre. Her newest play Sky….Diamonds, about a family whose communication dynamics are intensified by having a relative with Alzheimer’s, had two successful public readings and is in further development. Kate’s radio play (Sacrifice) was read in workshop and she is developing into a stage play.

Professional directing credits include: Secret Bridesmaid’s Business, Quilters, The Weir, Sweet Phoebe, Cloud Tectonics and numerous staged and new play readings. As a theatre director at Linfield College credits include: Mother Courage, Antigone, Reckless, Voice of The Prairie, and Keely and Du. On stage Kate has played lead roles in Medea, Equus, Painting Churches, Eleemosynary, and Bedroom Farce. She also works as a voice actress.

She is available as a coach for writers, actors and for personal development. She can also create/administer new programs for specific purposes for almost any arts or healthcare organization in any community.

Kate conducts ‘play’shops in writing for support groups, those in the medical profession and others and has taught workshops in the arts and healthcare and in theatre, and made presentations throughout the USA and internationally, including:

• • Linfield - Good Samaritan Nursing School staff and faculty - ‘Horizontal Violence in the Workplace’ series - June 2006.
• • Nelson BC - Innovations Arts and Health Symposium - June 2006
• • Society for Arts in Healthcare - Annual Conference, 6/2005, Canada, & 4/2002, Florida
• • ‘Expressions of Trauma: Using Theater, the Arts, and Writing to Promote Healing’ at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Gender Based Violence and Trauma Conference.
• • Veterans Affairs Readjustment Services Team Leaders Conference - Reno
• • Flinders Medical Center (Oncology) - South Australia - Medical Grand Rounds (‘Performing Wellness’, arts in healthcare presentation)
• • OHSU Medical residents - creative ‘playshop with words’
• • Good Samaritan Hospital - Cancer Support Groups - creative ‘playshop with words’

TESTIMONIALS

General
"How can I thank you enough for this feeling of euphoria! I feel that I have this huge weight that I have carried for close to 35 years being very carefully lifted away."
Colleen, writer PW

"I believe that if the folks at Johns Hopkins were to measure Kate's heart, they would find it to be 10 times the size of yours or mine. Kate has the gift of being able to get people to look into themselves, their life experience, and let their narrative voice be freed."
Duffy - Actor

"Kate has the rare combination of gifted artist and administrator."
Regional Arts and Culture Council

"Kate Hawkes is about the most vital, positive-thinking, hard-working, visionary I have ever met. This is one of the unique people in the world and I would be proud to work with her again."
Tom Gressler, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Linfield College.

Personal Support & Guidance
"She is a miracle worker."
Writer, PW

"I had the privilege of participating in "Release Your Personal Magic" workshop with Kate Hawkes. It was like getting off the bus at 10 a.m. in one neighborhood and three hours later finding myself transported to the unpaved parts of mine and everyone else's heart. Kate had a way of guiding us across the river, and then gently but capably bringing us home again, all of us changed in the process."
Sharon, Personal Magic Workshop participant

"Kate's insights into the writing, combined with her deep understanding of drama and commitment to the development process, made for a rich and rewarding experience. Truly, the work would not be what it is without her contribution."
Michael, Writer

"Exceptional, spunky speaker. Exciting. What a gift- thank you for sharing your experiences and for bringing this amazing tool to the world. I think it is truly changing lives, and slowly, the world ... one small story at a time."
"You do magnificent things for all involved and heal so many hearts in the process."
Attendees, after Society for Arts In Healthcare 2005 Conference Presentation

Regarding Kate's work in her capacity as a consultant for the Society for Arts In Healthcare.
"Kate brought. tremendous enthusiasm, insight, ability to see the big picture, willingness to adapt plans to meet our needs. She was insightful, creative and intelligent. A real pleasure to work with."
Duffy Health Center,Inc.

"Kate helped us to articulate our message and hone in what our niche was within the arts and healthcare community."
Hearthstone Alzheimer's Foundation; Artists for Alzheimer?s.

Arts In Healthcare
See References and Studies paper (an acrobat pdf file will open in a new window).

Theatre Arts
"Kate is an excellent teacher & director... very skilled at pulling the right emotions/abilities out of actors and non-actors alike."
Linda, Producer/Project Mgr., Oregon.

"Kate's work has changed our community. With her skill and dedication she has lit a fire that will burn and grow for years to come."
Dwight, Rural Community Theatre Participant

From actors who have performed in the Performing Wellness work:
"I felt exactly the (right) amount of support and guidance you gave."
"I felt permission to either say 'no more input' or ask for more feedback if I needed."
"Your notes were so welcome and astute."
"I felt supported and safe every step of the way."
"A wonderful ability to allow freedom of expression but with a boundary that kept the process from turning into endless indecision."

Response to Kate's performance as the recovering alcoholic Evy in Neil Simon's 'The Gingerbread Lady'
"WOW and double WOW. We were blown away by the professional acting. The play was more disturbing than funny because all of us have experience working with Jimmy, Toby, Evy, and Polly. The play does a good job showing the stripped down essence of addiction. You were totally believable in your portrayal of Evy. I'm impressed."
Susan, LCSW, Audience Member ?The Gingerbread Lady'

Performing Wellness
"Working with Kate Hawkes as a board member for the Well Arts Institute has been a blessing to me both personally and professionally. She is vibrant, deep, analytical and intuitive. it has enriched and expanded the way I practice medicine." Eric Walsh, M.D.

"Kate is spectacular - the process amazing, the work extraordinary!"
"Incredible presentation and intriguing, honest, beautiful stories."
Conference participants - Society for the Arts in Healthcare (2005)

"(Kate's) boundless energy, ability to organize and coordinate so many things simultaneously... unending enthusiasm, and belief in the project and in us."
Performing Wellness Writer

"For the first time in my life I feel that the burden of Vietnam has been lightened and that I have begun to be freed of guilt that I felt for living when so may others, both America and Vietnamese, did not."
Ted, writer PW

"Writing is always therapeutic but the totally new experience of collaborating with a professional actor was very profound. Their enthusiastic involvement?pulled me along with it into the recognition that I can and should have more self-respect and can experience a productive self reliance."
writer PW

"The project as a result did make me feel whole again."
writer, PW

"I thoroughly enjoyed the performing wellness. what an extraordinary process to guide ordinary individuals into creating not only compelling testimonials but also such powerful works of dramatic art."
Paul Bascom, MD - OHSU, Palliative Medicine Program.

"It amazes me how you can't walk away from a Performing Wellness without being deeply touched. Someone's life events become a part of you. You become connected with strangers, because you all shared the profound experience of feeling naked emotion."
Audience Member, PW