Sue
Sue Jennings
Sue’s work has travelled through dance, theatre, dramatherapy, play, anthropology, writing and performance for more than six decades. She has been a pioneer of dramatherapy and play therapy, developed new ways of thinking about creative practice, and continued to experiment throughout her life with how theatre, play, story, ritual and imagination can help people connect, learn and change. Her work has taken her from performance spaces and hospitals to schools, universities, prisons, communities and the Malaysian jungle, and has produced more than fifty books alongside decades of teaching, research and international collaboration.
Sue's work
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Dance, Theatre & Performance
Performance has been part of Sue’s life from the beginning. She began as a dancer and went on to work as an actor, director, teacher, writer and theatre maker. Her work has moved between professional performance, theatre in education, schools, festivals, museums, therapeutic settings and community projects. Through Rowan Studio she developed Theatre Science performances including Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Meg the Midwife and Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of DNA, using performance to bring science, history and human experience together. Other work included Romeo and Juliet: The Nurse’s Story, which opened at the Edinburgh Fringe, The Wife of Bath, and A Spiral of Madness, written by Sue and devised with Clare Higgins. Theatre was rarely separate from the rest of her work. It became a place where story, play, healing, education, research and social questions could meet, and where people could become makers and performers rather than simply an audience.
Dramatherapy & Play
Play and dramatherapy have been at the heart of Sue’s work for many decades. She has worked with children and adults in clinical, educational and community settings, using drama, play, story, movement, objects, masks, puppets and creative groupwork as ways of exploring experience and building relationships. Her work has included play therapy with referred children, dramatherapy, supervision, work around fertility difficulties, trauma, autism, special education, older people and dementia, as well as creative approaches to health and wellbeing. Through Rowan Studio and other projects she continued to explore how theatre and play could become practical ways of helping people communicate, imagine, experiment and change. Rather than separating therapy from creativity, Sue’s work has repeatedly brought them together, creating the ground from which many of her later methods and ideas developed.
Temiar & Anthropology
Anthropology became one of the great turning points in Sue’s life and work. After studying Social Anthropology in London, she took her children to live with the Temiar in Malaysia for two years while carrying out the fieldwork for her PhD. Living within the community gave Sue a very different experience of play, ritual, healing, dreaming, movement, music and the relationships between children and adults. The research became Theatre, Ritual and Transformation: The Senoi Temiars, but its influence travelled much further than the book. Ideas and experiences from those years continued to shape Sue’s thinking about dramatherapy, play, attachment, ritual, creativity and later Neuro Dramatic Play. Sue returned to the Temiar many times, and what began as doctoral fieldwork became a relationship that continued across decades through family life, research, education, healing projects and shared work.
EPR, NDP & Creative Methods
Sue has spent much of her working life developing new ways of understanding how people play, create, communicate and change. Embodiment Projection Role, usually known as EPR, grew from her observations of play and became a way of understanding movement from bodily experience, through imaginative projection, into role. Neuro Dramatic Play developed later, bringing together play, attachment, sensory experience, movement, rhythm, story and dramatic play. Around these ideas Sue has continued to experiment with masks, puppets, storytelling, ritual, dreams, the Mandala Method, the Healing Tree, Theatre of Resilience, nature, creative supervision and many other forms of imaginative practice. These methods have never been fixed recipes. They have developed through practice, research, observation and Sue’s willingness to keep trying new things with people in different settings and cultures.
Writing & Publications
Sue has written or edited more than fifty books, ranging from early work on drama, groupwork and dramatherapy to publications on play, attachment, storytelling, trauma, social anxiety and Neuro Dramatic Play. Her more recent books include Managing Social Anxiety in Children and Young People and, with Clive Holmwood, The Handbook of Neuro Dramatic Play. She has also co edited three major Routledge international handbooks on dramatherapy, play and therapeutic storytelling, and has written for young children through the Moose and Mouse stories. Her books have appeared in other languages and continue to bring together ideas developed through practice, research and international collaboration.
A fuller list of Sue’s writing and publications is available in Publications & Media.
Books and edited volumes
1973 Remedial Drama
1975 Creative Therapy
1986 Creative Drama in Groupwork
1987 Dramatherapy: Theory and Practice 1
1989 Role Play Cards for Social Skills
1992 Dramatherapy: Theory and Practice 2
1992 Dramatherapy with Families, Groups and Individuals: Waiting in the Wings
1993 Playtherapy with Children: A Practitioner’s Guide
1994 The Handbook of Dramatherapy
1995 Theatre, Ritual and Transformation: The Senoi Temiars
1995 Dramatherapy with Children and Adolescents
1997 Dramatherapy: Theory and Practice, Volume 3
1997 Introduction to Dramatherapy
1999 Introduction to Developmental Playtherapy
2004 Creative Storytelling with Children at Risk
2005 Creative Play with Children at Risk
2005 Creative Storytelling with Adults at Risk
2005 Goddesses
2009 Dramatherapy and Social Theatre: Necessary Dialogues
2011 Healthy Attachments and Neuro Dramatic Play
2015 The Anger Management Toolkit
2016 Routledge International Handbook of Dramatherapy
2018 Working with Attachment Difficulties in School Aged Children
2019 The Story of Moose and Mouse
2020 Working with Attachment Difficulties in Teenagers
2020 Working with Children and Young People who Self Harm
2021 Routledge International Handbook of Play, Therapeutic Play and Play Therapy
2022 Routledge International Handbook of Therapeutic Stories and Storytelling
2023 Managing Social Anxiety in Children and Young People
2025 The Handbook of Neuro Dramatic Play
International Work & Training
Sue’s work has travelled widely, but international work for her has rarely meant simply taking an established method somewhere else. She has taught, performed, supervised, researched and developed projects in many countries, working with universities, hospitals, schools, therapists, teachers, community organisations and local practitioners. Her work has included long running collaborations in Norway, extensive projects and training in Romania, work in India, Malaysia and many other parts of Europe, Asia and beyond. Workshops, summer schools, conferences and training programmes have brought together dramatherapy, play, storytelling, ritual, masks, movement, supervision and creative groupwork. Each place has also brought new relationships, ideas and ways of working, so international practice has continually fed back into Sue’s own thinking and development.
