A Developmental Transformations Institute
in the Greater Boston Area
Training Program
Since 2019, DvT Boston has offered a post-graduate training program and community for people looking to learn and practice the method of Developmental Transformations (aka DvT).
What is DvT?
It’s play! *** DvT emerged first in the 1980s as a combination of drama and dance-movement therapy, and it has been implemented in all kinds of clinical and non-clinical settings for therapeutic, educational, and recreational purposes. It is best conducted in a space devoid of props or furniture, with only carpet and pillows and a small circular rug for a witnessing circle.
It is an encounter between two or more people who engage in embodied transformations in the playspace – their co-created imaginary world. Each player (client) and playor (therapist) brings with them endless associations, impulses, roles, stories, emotions, desires, defenses, and rigidities, all of which have been constructed based on a need to organize and stabilize the raw stuff of experience and existence. As a way to question the need for rigid patterns of thinking and behavior, all these are subjected to the rules of the playspace: mutuality (we are choosing to be here together), discrepancy (everything is pretend), reversibility (we can switch roles at any time), and the very important restraint from harm. DvT is about being free!
DvT is a process of opening in order to experience presence.
“The method involves placing us in a unique interpersonal environment (the playspace) where we are forced to make choices, but where there are no real consequences for those choices, as a laboratory to explore a wide range of possibilities and then discern which ones will further the health and fulfillment of ourselves and others. […] DvT is a process of opening: opening in order to experience presence, opening in order to make contact with others, and opening in order to sense the infinite of which one is a part, the awe at the miracle of being alive this once, upon a time.” – David Read Johnson, Text for Practitioners 3, April 2025
How do I join the training?
DvT Trainees are asked to make a semester-long commitment, and preferably continue for the whole year. This year, semester one is Sept-Nov and semester two is shorter, Mar-Apr. The dates for 2026-2027 are September 19-20, October 17-18, November 14-15, March 20-21, and April 17-18. The cost is $1600 for the year; $160 per day. The trainings run from 9:30am-5:30pm, Saturday and Sunday.
We are located at 112 Bishop Richard Allen Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139.
Apply to join this year’s cohort by Monday, Aug 31, 2026. There are limited spots available. Candidates will be notified of their status after the deadline has passed.
Training Director
Erinn (she/her) has been practicing DvT since 2012, and has been a faculty member of DvT Boston since 2020. A graduate of Montreal and New York DvT Institutes, and long time drama therapist at the PTSD Center in New Haven, and Co-Director of the Miss Kendra Program, Erinn has had the chance to play with many people of all ages from all over the world.
Erinn’s passion for play has been lifelong. She is a queer woman originally from Canada who, through DvT, has found new ways to understand infertility, sexuality, motherhood, and existential dread. She has personally and professionally found that DvT can evoke^hold^express^embody the complexity of human experience unlike any other practice she has encountered.
Erinn works from home and is available for DvT training therapy and supervision.
