About Kathryn
A journey between creativity, relationship and meaning.
I am an HPCSA registered Arts Therapist, trained in Drama Therapy, and the founder of The Play Way.
My work is rooted in a deep curiosity about how we come to understand ourselves, how we make meaning of being alive, and how our relationships shape the people we become.
I have always been interested in the places where different parts of human experience meet: where words meet the body, where stories meet relationships, where imagination meets reality, and where something we have struggled to understand can sometimes become clearer through making, playing or being witnessed by another person.
I approach therapeutic work with attentiveness, patience and care. I believe meaningful therapeutic spaces need both safety and curiosity – enough steadiness to feel held and enough openness for something new to emerge.
The Play Way grew out of a journey of discovering how these things belong together.
How The Threads Came Together
I first encountered therapy when I was nine years old.
Much of that early work happened through games and play. What stayed with me was the experience of feeling safe, understood and free to be myself.
Around the same time, I discovered drama and theatre. I loved exploring characters, stepping into different ways of being, and discovering how much could be communicated without words. As I grew older, creativity became a way of exploring experiences that were sometimes difficult to approach directly.
Alongside this, my fascination with psychology grew. I wanted to understand what shapes us, how our histories influence our relationships, and what makes change possible.
For years, these seemed like separate interests – psychology on one side, theatre on the other.
I went on to study Psychology and Anthropology, exploring both individual experience and the wider influences of family, culture, community and society.
In my final year, an elective drama course introduced me to Drama Therapy through a lecturer who practised in the field. For the first time, I encountered an approach that brought psychology, creativity, embodiment and relationship together.
It felt like finding a language for something I had been circling for years.
I was encouraged to pursue further training and went on to complete a Master's degree in Drama Therapy. What had once seemed like separate threads had finally found a meeting place.
Becoming A Therapist
My training took me into many different rooms, communities and ways of working.
I worked with children, adolescents and adults, across clinical, educational and community settings. I worked with adults in psychiatric care, and with children with special educational and developmental needs. I facilitated individual and group work, and learned how differently people communicate, connect and make sense of their experiences.
During my clinical training, I designed and facilitated individual and therapeutic group work through the Lefika la Phodiso After-School Programme and Low/No-Cost Clinic and the Sparrow Foundation School Psychosocial Support Team in Johannesburg.
I also worked with Khulisa Social Solutions, developing and facilitating creative programmes in urban and rural communities across South Africa. These explored inclusivity, gender-based violence, democracy and community dialogue.
These experiences taught me that there is no single way to enter therapeutic work. For some people, words are the natural starting point. For others, it might be movement, play, an image, a story, a relationship or simply having someone stay alongside them long enough for something to become clearer.
They also deepened my awareness of the systems and circumstances that influence people's access to care. Our inner worlds do not exist in isolation. We are moulded by the structures we live within – and these impact what we are able to imagine, express and understand about ourselves.
Alongside my professional training, my own experiences of relationships, loss and change gave new meaning to the psychological ideas I had studied.
I came to understand that we do not simply learn about ourselves; we live our way into knowing ourselves.
Becoming a therapist has therefore also meant remaining curious about my own experiences and patterns, and recognising the importance of ongoing reflection, responsibility and personal growth.
I believe meaningful therapeutic work asks us to remain present, stay curious and meet another person without needing to make their experience fit a predetermined answer.
What I'm Drawn To
Over time, certain questions began to follow me more closely:
How do our earliest relationships shape the ways we connect later in life? How do we recognise patterns that once felt like simply who we are? What happens when something can be felt long before it can be put into words? And how do our environments influence what we believe is possible for ourselves?
These questions have drawn me towards relational work, intimacy, embodiment, creativity, group processes, and working with children and adolescents.
My Master's research explored the use of Drama Therapy in supporting intimacy recovery within adult relationships, including how early experiences can shape emotional, physical, sexual, intellectual and spiritual intimacy.
My clinical and community work has also strengthened my interest in the relationship between our inner experiences and the wider social and relational worlds we inhabit.
At the centre of this is an understanding that we are shaped by our relationships, histories, bodies, communities, imaginations and the stories we have learned to tell about ourselves.
I believe meaningful change can emerge when we are given the opportunity to encounter familiar experiences differently – to question old stories, discover new perspectives and recognise possibilities that may previously have felt unavailable.
Why I Created The Play Way
The Play Way grew from all of these threads coming together.
From an early experience of feeling safe and understood. From discovering that play can be a language. From theatre, psychology, clinical training and community work. And from the ongoing realisation that creativity is capable of much more than simply giving difficult feelings somewhere to go.
For me, the arts are a way of discovering, relating, remembering, imagining and making meaning.
A drawing, a story, a movement, a character, an object or a shared ritual can sometimes allow us to approach something differently – not because the creative act provides an answer, but because it gives us a way of asking different questions.
This is part of what continues to draw me to Drama Therapy. It allows us to work with the whole person. We can move between different ways of knowing rather than assuming that one language will always be enough.
I wanted to create a practice where that possibility could be taken seriously. A place where relational vulnerability and intimacy are honoured, where creativity is not reduced to a product or an outlet, and where there is room to slow down enough to discover what an experience might mean.
I believe that the arts therapies can act as a bridge – between what we know and what we are still discovering, between inner experience and relationship, and between the individual and the wider world.
Through The Play Way, I am committed to building that bridge.
Qualifications & Registration
Master of Arts in Drama Therapy (University of the Witwatersrand)
Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA)
Registered Arts Therapist
Registration No: AT0002321
Practice No: 1328441
Interested in Working Together?
If something in this work resonates with you, you're warmly invited to get in touch.
You don't need to know exactly what you need before you reach out. We can begin with a conversation.
