It is a happy talent to know how to play.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dr Russya Connor
The Creative Philosopher
The Creative Philosopher
My life has moved through many different worlds: dance, theatre, performance, philosophy, therapy, academia, business and the science of play.
My work has never belonged neatly to one discipline.
As an artist, I understand what it means to begin without knowing exactly where you will end — to experiment, improvise, play, create something where nothing existed before, and trust the process.
As a philosopher, I ask questions, look beneath the obvious and remain curious about meaning, possibility and the existential dilemmas that are part of being human.
As a therapist, I have learned to stay with complexity — to listen to what is spoken and unspoken, to work with emotion, story and relationship, and to create space for different ways of seeing, feeling and responding.
As an entrepreneur, I understand that ideas need to live in the real world. Innovation requires practice. Creativity needs to become action. And collaboration is not simply an outcome — it is a living process of working, discovering and creating together.
On the surface, these worlds can appear quite different. To me, they have always been connected by the same questions:
- How do we make meaning?
- How do we stay creative when life becomes difficult or uncertain?
- How do we remain connected to ourselves and each other?
- How do we imagine something beyond what we already know?
Play has been one of the threads running through all of it.
Not simply play in the childlike sense, but play as a profoundly human capacity for exploring, experimenting, relating and discovering. Play allows us to enter the unknown without needing to have the answer first. It gives imagination somewhere to move.
Over time, these ways of knowing have become less separate.
Together, they have shaped my understanding of what I call Inner Magic — our human capacity to shift perception, create spaciousness, expand our choices and discover possibilities we may not have been able to see before.
Across Worlds
My work has taken me into remarkably different places — from theatres, movie sets and universities to boardrooms, prisons and rehabilitation centres.
Across these environments, I have worked as a performer and theatre-maker, therapist, lecturer, educator, researcher, facilitator and speaker, with experience spanning the performing arts, higher education, creative arts therapy, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and organisational development.
These experiences have brought me alongside people from very different backgrounds, each navigating their own forms of complexity, change and possibility.
Each context asks us to pay attention, to listen and to respond to what is actually present.
Different worlds. Different people. Different questions.
Yet across them, I have witnessed our capacity to imagine, adapt, connect and create.
My creative and academic work continues to inform this approach. As a performance artist and dramatherapist, I have spent decades exploring the relationship between the body, imagination, poetic expression and aesthetic experience. My doctoral research at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts extended this inquiry through embodied, practice-led research.
Rather than arriving with a predetermined answer, I am interested in creating the conditions for spontaneity and imagination to unfold — and for something unexpected to emerge.
Qualifications & Professional Practice
PhD, Performing Arts
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)
Master of Arts, Drama Therapy
Edith Cowan University
Registered Creative Arts Therapist (AThR) & Approved Supervisor
ANZACATA — Australian, New Zealand and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association
Certified Facilitator
LEGO® Serious Play®
Master Trainer
Rhythm2Recovery
Professional Performing Arts Training
Monsun Vocational School for Voice and Movement, Hamburg, Germany
Amerta Movement & Meditation Practitioner
Author
The Little Playbook (The Book Incubator, 2023)
The creative philosopher
“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson