Stretch your body. Spark your imagination.
Led by Linda Kee and Clare Preuss
Sessions are by donation with proceeds supporting Downstage
Creative Stretch is a playful 50-minute experience designed to nurture your physical, mental, and emotional well-being while reconnecting you with your creative potential.
“I can come in feeling like a ham sandwich and leave feeling like a bumblebee and at the same time totally myself.”
Participant Response
Each session weaves together elements such as gentle yoga, meditation, creative writing, songs, theatre games, and deep relaxation in a welcoming space that stokes collective creativity.
“Surprising and Fun!”
“I felt like a kid again!” “Very well facilitated”
Participant Responses
Whether you’re an artist, theatre lover, or just looking for a different way to explore your creativity, you’ll leave feeling more grounded, connected, and open to possibility.
MORE COMING IN 2027!
Downstage will pause Creative Stretch for the winter holidays. Classes will resume mid-January 2027.
As a theatre and film artist, Linda specializes in using theatre and storytelling as a vehicle for positive social transformation. Working in Arts Education as a Teaching Artist, Linda believes that the arts is a vital entity in supporting and empowering learners to find freedom to guide their own personalized learning. She practices the values of expression, connection and collaboration as a Theatre of the Oppressed Forum Theatre Facilitator, and sharing the philosophy of the late Professor and Philosopher in Residence at the Lincoln Center of Education in NYC, Maxine Greene, who designed the pedagogy of Aesthetic Education, using digital, media, literary, visual, performing, music and movement arts to make learning inclusive. She includes the modalities of movement, yoga and taoist arts to foster wellness and healthier communities. She infuses these modalities into her storytelling, teaching and facilitation. She values telling stories in different avenues of expression, working to amplify the voices of subjugated perspectives, to foster understanding, deeper listening, and to celebrate community.
Clare is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who has worked with innovative creators across Canada as well as in Germany, Lebanon, Switzerland, Uganda and the USA.
Selected theatre directing credits include Botticelli in the Fire, Men Express Their Feelings (Downstage, Hit & Myth), Peril in the Alps (Vertigo), The F Word (Purple Tamarind), Liars at a Funeral (Alberta Theatre Projects, Western Canada Theatre), Beautiful Man (Downstage, Handsome Alice, Verb), A Poem for Rabia (Tarragon Theatre co-directed with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard), A Dinner Party, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Myth of the Ostrich (Whitehorse Guild), Bystander (Gwaandak Theatre), White Girls in Moccasins (Rhubarb Festival), CAKE (Bayimba Festival, New Harlem Productions, Theatre Passe Muraille), Tuesdays & Sundays (Sundown Theatre), L’armoire des ombres (Le Monnot Theatre Beirut), Salome’s Clothes (SummerWorks), among others.
Clare made her feature directorial debut with Do Us Part, which premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2025 and recently directed the allegorical short film Hunt/Peck, set for release in 2026. As an actor, she is known for playing Mathlete Caroline Krafft in the original Mean Girls, among other screen roles.
Clare is a certified yoga instructor who has been leading sessions in yoga studios, schools, parks and theatres since 2000. She has been a sessional instructor at Humber College and University of Calgary as well as a guest instructor at various other post-secondary institutions and theatre companies across this land and in Switzerland. Clare is the Artistic Director at Downstage.