Retta Bowen

Retta Bowen is a graduate of Storytelling Beyond Words and is a psychotherapist and breathworker. Throughout her career she has helped people to tell the stories of their lives in ways that bring coherence, meaning and compassion. In 2017 she left London and her work as a full-time child and family therapist in specialist settings to train as a clown at the School of Clown and Comedy in Montreal, Canada. This was after reconnecting with an early love of performance (through improv, clown and the work of Keith Johnstone) and rediscovering the vitality and joy born of spontaneity. Since then, Retta has continued her explorations in story, fooling and clown with many teachers, and is part of an all-female troupe of idiots, Can’t Understand Nothing, Twatface.

Retta finds that these practices, combined with the gentle power of the breath, are indispensable teachers in how to live with greater authenticity, creativity and freedom. She believes that what we have repressed, and are afraid of, is often our gold, and that through playfulness and permission we can allow the full range of our feelings, awakening more of who we are and restoring lost vitality.

It is her delight to support people to discover their truth and express it through art. She is a passionate believer in the transformative power of imagination, and our capacity to inhabit and commune with many worlds. Indeed, she believes it has never been more important to create, through the act of telling, the new world we long to live in – and to remember that we are necessary and worthy parts of a beautiful whole. In 2024 she performed her biographical story, Maiden Mother Crone, at a number of UK festivals and toured it in New Zealand.