About Rachel
RACHEL CORDAY
Biography 2006
Rachel Corday is an author, a playwright, an actor,
and a teacher. She has an MFA in Theatre Arts from the
University of Colorado at Boulder, and a PhD in
Expressive Arts Therapy from Summit University of
Louisiana at New Orleans. She is an ordained minister
with the church of Spiritual Humanism.
Rachel is a Certified Expressive Arts Therapist and a
Lifetime Diplomate with the National Institute of
Expressive Therapy. She has been an activist with the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) for
eighteen years, has served on the NAMI board of
directors for the state of Colorado, and is the
immediate past president of NAMI Boulder County.
She is a member of the Colorado Author’s League and is
author of the non-fiction books The Common Loon,
Expressive Therapy and The Art in Spirit, The Common
Loon Essays on Serious Mental Illness, and Just One
Sparrow: The Dance Between Nothingness and
Somethingness, Understanding Life as Art. She is
author of the novels Haight Street, The Summertime of
Baily Lowell, and The Benningdon-Crank Nervous
Hospital. She has won writing prizes and publication
for several short stories, and for her essay
Psychosis, The Inner Experience.
Her sixty minute video Losing The Thread, The Inner
Experience of Psychosis, which she wrote and produced,
has been awarded a four-star review by the National
Video Rating Guide for Libraries. The video is
distributed nationally by Insight Media, Inc.
She is an accomplished playwright and has been
produced in Honolulu and the San Francisco Bay Area,
and in Boulder, Denver, and the nationally acclaimed
Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado.
Rachel is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and is
most well known for her feature role in the CBS
movie-of-the-week Manhunt, The Search for Claude
Dallas. She is a professional stage actor and among
many leading roles, has played Jessie in the Pulitzer
Prize winning play ‘Night Mother at Harbor Repertory
Theatre in New York.
She has studied intensively with the acclaimed theatre
artist and Emmy award-winning actress Viveca Lindfors.
She has been recipient of a Best Supporting Actress of
the Season nomination from the Denver Critic’s Circle.
As Artistic Director of the Corday Actors Studio, she
teaches acting at the beginning and advanced levels in
the Boulder and Denver area. She also teaches
metaphysics through her class The Art in Spirit, which
explores the meaning of art and the artistic process.
She is a leading speaker and advocate for
understanding the inner life of those who suffer from
the brain disorders which cause serious mental
illness. She teaches workshops on the inner experience
of psychosis, and the process of psychosis in relation
to the meaning of art and spirit and the qualities
inherent in healing.