This week I'm speaking with the theater performer, director and teacher Ethan Kobayashi-Hsieh. Ethan is the creator of TIAMAT, which stands for The Integrative Approach and Methodology of Active Transformation. Put succinctly, Ethan's work uses theater as the means for practitioners to create an embodied, multi-perspectival awareness of themselves as applies to a robust search for meaning and purpose.

I first encountered his work through the podcast of cognitive scientist and professor John Vervaeke. I immediately saw parallels to my own theories about theater as a pathway toward individuation: Jung's term for the process of intense self discovery and meaning making. Both Ethan and John's work has proven inspirational and I reached out to Ethan and began a conversation.

This led to our recording what you're about to see which lasted nearly two hours. I'm breaking the episode in two for ease of digestion. We get in to the nuts and bolts of how theater is uniquely suited as an ecology of practice and it's immediacy of effect. Ethan also explores deeper aspects of his work as relates to Vervaeke's theories of meaning making.

The Quotidian is produced by carolinacommons.org and is dedicated to exploring and celebrating the creative energy of the human spirit. For more information visit the website, and if you'd like to support the show directly, you can do so at patreon.com/thequotidian

I'm thrilled to have had this conversation, and look forward to more. If you like what you're seeing and hearing, let us know.

Thanks for being here, and please enjoy this dialogue with the hyper intelligent, ebullient and effervescent Ethan Kobayashi-Hsieh.

• Theme Music

• The Colours of Chlöe

• Written & Performed by Eberhard Weber

• Used by arrangement with ECM Records

• Incidental music from Epidemic Sound

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