Suraya Susana Keating
Suraya Susana Keating - Drama Therapist
"Now that all that worry has proved an unlucrative business, why not find a better job." - Hafiz
"Love one another and you will be happy. It is as simple and as difficult as that." - Michael Leunig
Suraya Susana Keating is a Registered Drama Therapist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT #43996) in the state of California who has worked primarily with adults, children, teenagers and with men incarcerated in the California state correctional system. During her early explorations of psychology in a Master’s Degree program in Developmental Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Suraya initially focused on the ways in which social and cultural factors condition us to behave and think in certain ways. While this conditioning can sometimes help us to construct an identity and provide us with a sense of value, it can also limit us from fully expressing our being, thereby creating suffering.
With a strong background in the theatre arts and creative movement, Suraya later became interested in the ways in which the arts can be utilized to express and transform suffering and to open us to new possibilities for how we experience ourselves and the world. Inspired by her passion both for the arts and for the human psyche, Suraya pursued further training in Expressive Arts Therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. After completing her second Master’s Degree in 1999, Suraya began working both as an Expressive Arts Therapist and as a Drama Therapist. Locally, she has facilitated individual and group therapy sessions with children, teens and adults at Berkeley High School, the Cedars of Marin, Community Services Department of Contra Costa County, and at the Living Arts Counseling Center in Oakland. Bilingual in Spanish, Suraya has also worked extensively with the Latino population in the Bay Area.
With Suraya’s experience as an actress and as a drama teacher, Suraya’s work has shifted in recent years towards an emphasis on Drama Therapy. While she incorporates various arts modalities when needed, she is most inspired by the tools she has learned from Improvisation, Psychodrama, Playback Theatre and other approaches that have shaped the theory and practice of Drama Therapy. Whether working with individuals or groups, Suraya utilizes an embodied, action-oriented approach within a safe container that is compassionate and sensitive to individual needs and preferences. She believes strongly that when the creative process is awakened within each of us, many of the day-to-day problems and struggles that we face can be transformed.