Hector Aristizabal

Medellin, Colombia
Los Angeles, California

Phone: +57 3116141309
Email: haristizabal60@gmail.com
Website: www.imaginaction.org/

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Bio:

Hector was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia when it was the most dangerous city in the world. He worked his way out of poverty to become a theatre artist and pioneering psychologist. He survived civil war, arrest and torture. In 1989 he was exiled in the U.S. Since arriving in the U.S, he received a second Masters degree, in Marriage and Family Therapy from Pacific Oaks College and worked as a therapist with torture and trauma survivors, incarcerated youth, immigrant families, and people affected by HIV/AIDS. He founded ImaginAction to help people tap the transformative power of theater in programs throughout the U.S., Latin America, Europe and around the world. He has served on the core council of the Colombia Peace Project-LA and on the boards of the Program for Torture Victims and of Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed. Hector was recently honored with the prestigious Otto René Castillo Award for Political Theatre. He is co-author of The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation. Hector has recently moved back to his native Colombia to work in the on-going peace process developing what he calls: “Theater for Reconciliation” which uses theater both as a laboratory for social exploration and as a laboratory for the creation of communal healing rituals.