Drama Therapy Review - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2016

A short-form of Developmental Transformations (DvT) is presented as a method of stress reduction for elementary school students. DvT short-form is compared with other stress reduction approaches such as recess, mindful meditation, yoga, progressive muscle relaxation and release therapy. A case example illustrates the phases and specific techniques used, which include placing a demand on the student through the play, identifying an important relational theme, varielating the theme, and then working through the moment of recognition where the real stressor is differentiated from the play situation. This case study highlights the likelihood that DvT short form serves as an effective stress reduction technique.

Proxy scenes, improvised enactments devised by drama therapists, are useful in overcoming client limitations (‘constraints’) as they explore, experiment with or practise change. This article presents four underlying variables that may be calibrated to create effective Proxy scenes, elucidates the underlying principle informing therapists’ practical choices, and illustrates Proxy scene application to the example of an individual client in group therapy.

Adolescent females who have experienced being in foster care require ongoing therapeutic support once adopted yet their perspectives are seldom heard. Four young women aged 16–18 who were adopted from foster care participated in a narrative, arts-based enquiry using the Personal Public Service Announcement (PPSA), a 30-second, make-believe PSA that integrated narradrama and a digital application on an iPad. Five themes emerged: self-expression and creativity, self-identity, independence, self-love or self-acceptance and survival from loss. This research offers foster care, adoption support services, drama therapists and others a method for generating data as well as a viable, action-based intervention that enables adolescent girls in foster care to tell their stories and to be heard.

The current study explored the impact of participation in a creative drama course on emerging adults’ levels of empathy. Students enrolled in a creative drama class participated in this pilot study utilizing a prepost-test design. Mean comparisons revealed a significant difference in perspective taking post course. Results suggest that this group experienced a cognitive shift over time in their ability to think about the perspective of another.

This article proposes that drama therapeutic intervention may be particularly effective in promoting secure attachment between children and their caregivers. The author frames attachment as a theatrical performance in which the child and the caregiver are cast as players in the dramatic action. The author then reviews three elements of drama therapeutic intervention and their relationship to attachment: aesthetic distance, role and interpersonal exchange. These elements should be considered as drama therapists develop protocols to serve young children and their caregivers.

This study investigates the interaction of attachment styles and drama therapy (DT) techniques at various levels of therapeutic distance during brief therapy. Five mothers with children diagnosed with psychiatric disorders participated in a DT support group. Mother attachment styles and their responses to DT techniques were assessed using the Relationships Scales Questionnaire (RSQ). Participants had insecure attachment styles and appeared to prefer an overdistanced approach. Therefore, attuning to client attachment styles may help drama therapists titrate distance and support the therapeutic process.

This article explores indigenous Hawaiian epistemology in relation to perspectives in drama therapy in order to discover intersections between these two bodies of knowledge. The author presents a review of literature pertaining to the history and impact of colonialism in Hawaii, and indigenous ways of knowing. Three major themes: place, embodiment and relationship, are discussed in relation to various concepts and approaches in drama therapy. This creates space for this narrative in our body of knowledge and contextualizes drama therapy within an indigenous and postcolonial understanding of well-being.

This article explores the role of the art form in both research and teaching practice for the delivery of an MA drama therapy program in the United Kingdom. A/r/tography as the chosen research methodology makes central the artistic process to inform teaching and research through ongoing reflexivity using dramatic improvisation. Seven phases (renderings) illustrate the development towards formulating a drama therapy pedagogy. The authors explore disseminating the research through performance as another form of praxis.

DRAMA EDUCATION AND DRAMATHERAPY: EXPLORING THE SPACE BETWEEN DISCIPLINES, CLIVE HOLMWOOD (2014) New York: Routledge, 184 pp., ISBN: 9780415718479, h/bk, $145.00