Elisabeth Couture, PhD

For over 40 years, Dr. Élisabeth Couture has developed and nourished her practice as a theatre artist, an expressive arts facilitator, and a teacher.

Dr. Couture earned her PhD from Laval University in 1997. Influenced heavily by cybernetics as applied to human communication, a theory developed by the Palo Alto Group, Couture works with rhythms and developmental phases mirrored in the natural world, nurturing both process and product. Whether as director, teacher, project leader, or therapist, Couture strives to create whole systems with continual feedback loops, allowing the systems to move and change organically. She crafts flexible and vigorous relationships in her projects, enabling artistic excellence to emerge from a foundation of respect and trust.

Currently, Dr. Couture is touring her theater company, Promito Playback, to Montreal’s French language immersion programs for immigrants. Audience members share stories about their experiences as immigrants, and Promito’s actors play them back using improvisational structures, acoustic music, and fabric, the tools of the form. Her project is funded by the Canadian Council for the Arts, CUPFA, and Mediation Culturelle Montreal. Promito Playback is the performance arm of Ateliers l’ Aquarium et le Globe, a not-for-profit production company which Dr. Couture established in 1999.

Dr. Couture also founded L’école affiliée de théâtre playback de langue française, the first Playback Centre affiliate school serving francophones around the world. In addition, she is a certified Director of Psychodrama involved in furthering the work of René Marineau, her mentor. Most recently, she launched a centre for Arts and Community Development in Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, a space in the Eastern Townships of Quebec available for arts retreats, trainings, group therapy, rehearsals, and other arts and community development projects.

Psychodrama conference in Estonia, 2018

International Playback Theatre Conference in Frankfurt, Germany and Montréal, Quebec 2011 - 2015