Alumni Profiles

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Eleni Papaleonardos, MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance '06

Eleni Papaleonardos spent half her childhood in Columbus, Ohio and the other half on a Greek island called Aegina. If dealing with two languages wasn't difficult enough, she also had to contend with dyslexia. As a result, she found other ways of expressing herself:

"There was a disconnect for me," she says. "Growing up between two different countries was one thing but not being comfortable with either language was quite another.  Everything was a puzzle and I had to figure out a more comfortable way to communicate.  For me it was physically. I don't think I was fully aware of all this at the time, but looking back now it makes perfect sense why I entered college in physical therapy, turned to theatre and then physical theatre."

Eleni's training began with mime, then Suzuki, and broadened out from there. "When I finished college," she says, "I wasn't sure if I would go to graduate school unless there was a program specializing in the physical side of theater." That requirement made Naropa Eleni's top choice. "I applied to no other graduate programs but Naropa's Contemporary Performance MFA. In my opinion there is nothing else out there like it. Finding a program that combined physicality with original work, mind and body with the study of theatre and meditation with working on impulse was something that very much appealed to me."