Dragonfly Studio is a part of the Dragonfly Studio Collection which also includes Dragonfly Studio Photography. All are helmed by Stephanie “Tippi” Hart and emphasize her passion for visual storytelling (and dragonflies). Tippi is an Assistant Professor of Movement in the Theatre Department of Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches courses in Movement for Actors, Stage Combat, and Fringe Festivals. 

 

She is originally from Louisiana where she received her bachelor’s and her master’s in Theatre from Louisiana Tech University. In 2025, she recieved her doctorate in Theatre and Performance of the Americas from Arizona State University where her research is in what she has titled "Emotional Dramaturgy". She defines the term as attending to the emotional world of a play and how actors safely enter into, live in, and exit from that world without taking the character’s emotions home with them. This research extends from her work and training as a fight and intimacy director.

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Her work combines her backgrounds of theatre, dance, stage combat and mental health and is rooted in embodied learning and kinesthetic storytelling. She is a director, choreographer, fight director, actor, Artistic Mental Health Practitioner, certified in Mental Health First Aide, and an intimacy professional . Tippi has studied internationally with Kawa:wi Dance Theatre in Canada, Frantic Assembly of London, the Ostrenko Brothers in Austria, and with Matteo Destro of Atelier Mask Movement Theatre in Tuscany, Italy. She served as the assistant artistic director for Phoenix’s professional company CaZo Dance Theatre.

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Tippi has been seen in Richmond on stage at Virginia Rep as M’Lyn in Steel Magnolias and in the world premiere of Roman A Clef at Firehouse Theatre as Queenie. Her work as a fight and intimacy director has been seen in the Richmond area on such works as Anonymous, Let the Right One In, MacBeth3, Rent, and Gross Indecency, Rhinoceros, The Wild Party and the upcoming The Bacchae of Euripieds: A Communion Rite at VCU; 4000 Days, Sugar in Our Wounds, Log Cabin, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, and Rocky Horror Show at Richmond Triangle Players; How I Learned to Drive at The TheatreLab; A Soldier’s Play at Swift Mill Creek Theatre,  and as Intimacy Coordinator on the second season of Apple TV’s Swagger.