Drama therapy
This is based on the work of Moreno – the concept is to explore the ‘truth’ in relationships and internal reality by using drama. The idea is to integrate aspects of the person through spontaneous creativity to meet their potential. This is a integrative way of working that helps a client to work through their problems, feelings and perspectives about past and present experiences that cause them to suffer. The emphasis is to not specifically look at the things that happened in the client’s life, but by evoking strong emotions via fictional stories to provide a ‘catharsis’ experience to allow buried insights to come up.
It is effective with people who are closed off to their own feelings, including those who have been traumatised.
This can be on a one-to-one basis or in a group setting. And the therapist uses fiction to enable the client(s) to act out different roles and to deal therapeutically with material that comes up. There are three elements to drama therapy:
- Warming up and setting the scene.
- Enactment
- Working through what is generated.
The client may be asked to use certain techniques such as:
- Modelling
- Mime
- Speech
- Rehearsal
- Doubling
- Role-play
- Future projection
- Role reversal
Drama therapy encourages spontaneous responses because it works with fictional material, thus it can be unpredictable as to what is generated. Therefore it is important to work with an experienced drama therapist, to help resolve the powerful feelings produced.
This therapy is suitable for all people, including children, young people and adults on the autism spectrum; young people and people who have experienced historical abuse. However, it is not suited to people who tend to be intellectual and do not like to act out scenarios.