Dramatherapy - Current Issue

A growing body of research suggests that improvisational theatre can have a positive impact on individuals’ well-being by promoting emotional expression, social connection and personal insight. Similarly, exposure to humour has been shown to confer some benefits to mental and physical health. Most studies have focused on passive exposure to humour or the induction of laughter. Improvisational comedy, which involves active group participation in humour creation, offers a unique opportunity to combine some of the therapeutic elements of both improvisational theatre and humour. Twenty-eight adults participated in a weekly improv comedy course delivered via Zoom and had their physiology and emotional states monitored. Participants wore Oura rings designed to measure physiological states continuously starting two weeks before the onset of improv classes to establish a baseline and throughout the six-week duration of the course. Emotional states were measured using self-report questionnaires. The study utilized a single-group design, so comparisons were within-subject. Participants self-reported increased feelings of creativity, connectedness, energy and empowerment after each class and a decrease in feeling tired and lonely. Oura rings’ data showed improvement in sleep quality and physical activity levels. Improvements in sleep quality were greater for older adults.

This exploratory research is interested in learning about some of the different ways drama therapy is taught and practised across national cultural contexts. It involves interviews with drama therapists who were trained in one country but have worked in one or more others. The underlying assumption is that therapists with cross-cultural experience may be especially perceptive to cultural differences in drama therapy practices. The research outlines the numerous adaptations therapists must make when working across cultures. Highlighting the discrepancy between training and practice in different cultural contexts, the article concludes with pedagogical recommendations for drama therapy training programmes.

This article challenges the concept of evidence as proposed by established empirical research as an exclusive form of evidence in dramatherapy. In recent decades, health policy has increasingly called for evidence-based practice and research in the arts therapies without considering current insights from decolonial and feminist theories. This literature points to the traces of oppression embedded in scientific terminology, the epistemic violence inherent in it, the limited, sometimes clearly reduced understanding of identity and nature, and the ignorance and devaluation of culturally divergent conceptions of health. Poetic evidence as an inherent quality of dramatherapy practice is presented as an alternative paradigm committed to providing an intersectional ethical lens with the aim of creating space for ‘subaltern’ voices (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) and facilitating a ‘polyphony of all languages’ (Édourad Glissant). The polyphonic approach in Glissant’s ‘poetics of relation’ and Haraway’s concept of ‘sympoiesis’ as a ‘worlding-with’ are contextualised to enrich the humus of poetic evidence as a new form of empirical evidence that remains inextricably linked to dramatherapy processes. The concepts of ‘dramatic reality’ and ‘dramatic resonances’ (Susana Pendzik) are shown to be interwoven with this paradigm of poetic evidence. A framework for future case studies based on poetic evidence is attempted, justified and outlined with reference to a previously published dramatherapy case study.

Review of: Child Agency and Voice in Therapy, Phil Jones, Lynn Cedar, Alyson Coleman, Deborah Haythorne, Daniel Mercieca and Emma Ramsden (2021)

London and New York: Routledge, 220 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-36786-162-9, h/bk, GBP 115.32

Review of: Routledge International Handbook of Play, Therapeutic Play and Play Therapy, Sue Jennings and Clive Holmwood (eds) (2021)

London: Routledge, 418 pp.,

ISBN 976-0-36763-127-2, p/bk, GBP 29.99

Review of: Intersectionality in the Arts Psychotherapies, Jessica Collier and Corrina Eastwood (eds) (2022)

London: Jessica Kingsley, 267 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78775-434-8, p/bk, USD 29.99