Dragonfly Physical Theatre - Company Bio
Dragonfly Physical Theatre is an emerging performance company dedicated to creating visceral, movement-driven theatre that explores the intersections of the body, emotion, memory, and human connection. Founded in 2026 by theatre artist, educator, choreographer, intimacy director, and fight director Dr. Stephanie “Tippi” Hart, Dragonfly creates original performances that place the body at the center of storytelling.Rooted in physical theatre, devised performance, choreography, and emotional dramaturgy, Dragonfly investigates the ways human experiences are carried, remembered, and expressed through the body. The company is drawn to stories that exist beyond the limits of traditional language; stories of grief, transformation, identity, resilience, relationships, and the complex emotional landscapes that shape our lives.Dragonfly’s work asks audiences to experience theatre as an embodied encounter. Through movement, breath, gesture, rhythm, repetition, spatial composition, and physical relationship, the company creates performances where the body becomes a source of narrative, emotion, and connection. Rather than separating movement from meaning, Dragonfly approaches physical expression as an essential part of the dramaturgy, allowing movement to reveal what words cannot.The company’s creative process is grounded in collaboration and discovery. Dragonfly approaches each project as an exploration, inviting artists to contribute their unique physical vocabularies, perspectives, and lived experiences. Through improvisation, composition, and ensemble-based creation, the company develops theatrical languages that are specific to each story while remaining accessible to diverse audiences. At the heart of Dragonfly’s artistic practice is a commitment to creating work that is both emotionally rigorous and deeply human. The company believes that powerful storytelling requires care, not only in the stories being told, but in the way artists are supported throughout the creative process. Drawing from Hart’s work in performer well-being, intimacy practices, fight direction, choreography, and movement research, Dragonfly strives to create collaborative environments built on trust, respect, and artistic curiosity.Dragonfly embraces theatrical forms that challenge conventional boundaries, incorporating elements of ritual, abstraction, magical realism, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The company seeks to create performances that invite reflection, empathy, and connection through works that honor the complexity of human experience while expanding the possibilities of what physical theatre can be.Based in Richmond, Virginia, Dragonfly Physical Theatre is committed to developing original performance that bridges disciplines and brings artists and audiences together through the shared language of the body.
Tippi Hart - Founder/Artistic Director
Tippi creates original physical theatre that invites audiences to experience a story rather than simply observe it. Her work embraces theatricality, non-realism, music, repetition, breath, gesture, and physical imagery. She is interested in the spaces between words: the pause before a response, the weight of a body, the distance between two people, the gesture we repeat without knowing why. For Tippi, movement is not decoration or accompaniment to the story. Movement is the story.Her artistic practice is informed by her research into emotional dramaturgy—the relationship between embodied experience, emotion, and theatrical structure. She is fascinated by the ways emotion lives physically in us and how those physical experiences can become material for performance. Her work asks audiences to trust their own embodied responses and to recognize the body as a source of knowledge.Tippi’s approach to creating theatre is deeply collaborative. She sees the rehearsal room as a place of discovery rather than simply a place to execute a predetermined vision. Through improvisation, physical exploration, composition, and conversation, she works alongside performers to uncover the language of each piece. The result is theatre that can feel intimate, visceral, playful, strange, beautiful, and deeply human.Her work as a director, choreographer, movement director, intimacy director, and fight director is united by a common belief: how we move through the world matters. The body carries our histories. It remembers what we have experienced. It adapts, protects, reaches, resists, grieves, celebrates, and continues.Tippi is an Assistant Professor and Head of Movement in the Theatre Department at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches movement, physical theatre, devising, and intimacy, consent, and well-being in the entertainment industry. She holds a doctorate from Arizona State University, where her research and creative practice explored emotionally charged performance and the relationship between embodiment, emotion, and theatrical storytelling.Through Dragonfly Physical Theatre, Tippi is building a home for stories that ask to be felt as much as heard—a place where artists can explore the possibilities of the physical, where embodied knowledge is valued, and where theatre can become a space for connection and transformation.
