Drama Therapy Review - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2015

This is the second of two articles reviewing the current state of drama therapy research. The article considers the need to challenge the ways in which power dynamics within research can mean that certain approaches are validated or foregrounded rather than others. Interviews with arts therapists in different countries are used to identify the need to build published accounts of good quality practitioner research. It examines how individual accounts can grow into field knowledge and contribute to meta- or systematic reviews.

Systematic assessment of processes and outcomes of drama therapy programmes in school settings is essential to effective practice. Drawing on previously published and current evaluations of ENACT’s programmes in New York City public schools, this article provides a narrative account of a three-stage process of evaluation. This account emphasizes how evaluation served to reinforce and articulate core elements of the programme, prompt the creation of structured curricula and workshops, and acknowledge of how ENACT’s programmes facilitate student growth in emotional learning and school engagement. Lessons learned and implications for programme evaluation, future research, and the role of drama therapy programmes in schools are discussed.

This study explores emotional arousal in relation to dramatic projection (DP) and dramatic embodiment (DE). Video segments of drama therapy processes that included DP and DE were rated using the Client Emotional Arousal Scale – III (CEAS). Participant emotional arousal (EMO) was significantly higher for video segments with DP than for video segments without DP. Participant EMO was also significantly higher for video segments of DE than for video segments without DE. These results suggest that both DP and DE can facilitate client emotional arousal, bringing about sustained expression and potentially leading to the processing of emotion, which in turn can be therapeutic. Future research should continue to explore relationships between drama therapy core processes and other psychotherapy process variables involved in client change.

In this article, the author suggests that aesthetic factors can help to enhance the here-and-now experiential dimension of psychodramatic group work. This in turn promises to leave a deeper, multisensorial imprint upon the protagonist and other players. The author also proposes that shared aesthetic experiences can help to deepen therapeutic rapport between participants and the therapist. The article offers examples of aesthetic options and preparatory approaches that can be utilized for mobilizing the full artistic potential of psychodrama. Vignettes from various dramas, together with participant reflections, are used to illustrate the author’s central thesis.

This article presents observations and questions arising from an ongoing investigation into therapeutic theatre. Faculty involved in the training of NYU drama therapy students discuss selected productions presented as part of the As Performance series at NYU between 2011 and 2014. In so doing, critical questions are raised such as: how does performance transform the therapeutic encounter? How does performance contribute to healing? What are the aesthetic and ethical considerations that attend this genre? How does therapeutic theatre function as research that can reveal and simultaneously respond to human suffering? How does the experience of therapeutic theatre differ for key players involved: clients, drama therapists, drama therapy students and audiences? Our preliminary observations indicate that therapeutic theatre can be contextualized as a restaging of the drama between client and therapist, that playmaking is a primary process, and that there are benefits and challenges that proceed from working within a deeply intersubjective space. Aesthetic and ethical considerations are paramount in the therapeutic theatre process and require ongoing examination and study.

In this article historical themes and methods of feminist performance are invoked to analyse a specific case study: Cancer As Change Maker, a piece of drama therapy created at New York University in 2013. Through this example, the author engages with the perils and potential lessons that feminist theatre carry for therapeutic theatre with a particular focus on the role of aesthetics and audience engagement.

Adolescents living under youth protection are vulnerable to stigmatization resulting from restrictive forms of group care and being labelled with derogatory epithets. Nine young women participated in art and drama therapy as well as individual interviews about their experience of living in a residential care facility. Resultant themes are presented in the form of a case vignette and a playscript (ethnodrama), which was performed for an audience of health care providers and family members. Findings indicate that this methodological approach was effective in eliciting the experiences of participants. However, while audience members indicated that the resulting performance had the intended impact, limitations in the project’s design precluded efforts to fully analyse the statistical significance of their pre- and postperformance responses.

This article discusses the application of dramaturgical analysis to understanding process in psychotherapy groups. The author outlines how concepts drawn from the theatre can be used to capture the flow of group process, the roles members take in relationship to one another and the qualities of effective groups. The article suggests how research contributes to building and testing clinical theory, and how a dramaturgical theory of group process may serve both researchers and clinicians.

Impromptu Man: J.L. Moreno and the Origins of Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network, Jonathan D. Moreno (2014) New York, NY: Bellevue Literary Press, 304 pp., ISBN-10: 1934137847, p/bk $18.95