Theatre Activation – Transformative paths

Theatre Activation – Transformative paths

Introduction

A very important sector in the panorama of current day theatre uses drama technique as a catalyst for awareness and growth, applying its methods towards the development of human potential.
Most of these groups use, to varying degrees, the actors’ formative process, such as: self-knowledge, sense memory, improvisation, body awareness, character analysis, etc., to create a theatre process that is part of a social project, developing pathways and methods that can help connect microcosm to macrocosm; man/woman to the surrounding community; the self to the other.
These processes, in the long run, tend to become performances, offering real opportunities for "collective self-awareness", creating "empathy fields", breaking down social stigma.

Art and therapy: a dialectical binomial

In many circles the word "theatre", especially in a social or mental health rehabilitation setting, is linked to the word "therapy". Therapy is derived from the greek term "therapeuo" which means: "to take care of";  but also "to serve" “to honor ",  or " to worship ". In this context the word has been connected for centuries to philosophy and medicine.  In modern times, however, the word has predominantly taken on the meaning of "a prescribed treatment", or rather, “the provision of a remedy that will correct a defect” (suppress a symptom) and restore to "normalcy" – supposedly putting the person back on track towards conventional behavior, meeting with the expectations of his environment. 

It’s obvious that in this context the term "theatre therapy" has an entirely different connotation.

In reality, as applied, art and therapy are two terms of a dialectical binomial.
Art is the ability to express and give shape to one’s experiences:  to convey emotions, feelings, intuitions - to give room to creativity and sharing.
Therapy indicates an act of solidarity, a meeting between two or more persons, where one cares for the other and helps him to come out of his suffering and to recuperate his most intimate vocations, helping to reactivate a process of inner growth and existential development.

In art, as in therapy, we perceive a need for communication and participation, a resolution of loneliness, the activation of a shared path of growth. Both refer to an act of communion, a meeting, authentically human. After all, art can be therapeutic in itself and therapy, at its best, contains the power of the creative act. Otherwise, both would boil down to something anonymous and ephemeral.
In authentic human meeting art becomes therapy and treatment becomes art. No longer can art therapy be seen as a simple juxtaposition of two elements, but, instead,  as a unified, holistic concept, including both words, theatre and therapy, yet going beyond - assuming a new and original meaning.

A missed encounter

We are facing a recurring uphill battle: the "therapists", on the one hand, staging the dreams, desires and experiences of their actors (aware of living real life “drama’s” first hand), and "theatre professionals" on the other, enacting the dreams, desires and experiences of their actors (aware of interpreting the real life “drama’s” of others).
And the encounter between therapy and performance continues, each claiming the right to this or that aspect of art or therapy, each looking askance at the other: on the one side, a poor theater, seemingly lacking in “talent” but rich in significance  and human warmth; on the other, a sleek well groomed theater, respectful of the sacred trappings of form and art, but more often than not, empty of meaning, mere second-hand experience impaled upon the scaffolds of "as if it were true."

And some artists disdain accosting the term "therapy" to their artistic endeavors, yet fill their vocabularies with evermore scientific and psychotherapeutic terms, as if to placate, or avenge the atavistic inferiority complex of “the actor rogue”, before audiences increasingly filled with "psycho-scientists" of all sorts.

And of course, some socially minded psychiatrists who propose bread, houses, jobs and lot’s of medicine as the panacea of public mental health (catapulting their patients back into society, yet ignoring that for most of them, “society” was where it all started in the first place), to accost the term “art” to their therapy conjures the looming specter of a not so distant pre-medicinal past where psychiatry was viewed as somewhat of a lesser science by its peers.

Social theatre and Empathy Fields

The path I propose is based on theatre technique as an element of activation, capable of pressing those hidden buttons that may catalyze the awakening of transformative processes.

The first objective of the theatre laboratory is to contact the “space of the self”.  To localize, feel and experiment with our “center” as a focal point, or gravitational fulcrum, of the body, of the cognizant self, of our world.

It is an experiential process, which applies theatre-therapy techniques.

Theatre therapy (otherwise known as theatrical mediation) proposes the following hypothesis:

1 – that we are essentially composed of a myriad of “I”’s: different faces of a whole system united around a more or less vivid concept of “me” – each "I" is distinct and often ignores the existence of the other "I's"; 

2 – that inside man/woman exists an “inner spectator” that bears witness to the population of “I’s” that compose him/her;

3 -  that the basic construct of human experience is the same for everybody, notwithstanding different personal biographies (sadness is sadness whether it is experienced by a man in the Amazonian jungle, or by a man in a New York suburb);

4 – that we are not our thoughts, rather, witnesses to our thoughts.

5 – that we have the capacity to feel the various parts of ourselves and those of others, on an empathic plane that can be experienced through different centers of our being (mental, physical, emotional, etc.) and not only through the conventional mental cognitive channels (the brain);

Together in the theatre we create moments of intimate awareness and public folly, in order to confront ourselves with that mirror called “spectator”.

Structure of a contemporary theatrical formative process:

1.  Art and/or therapy:  a dialectical binomial

-  A dialectical binomial

-  Art therapy:  the dignity of an autonomous concept

-  Existential planning, a prospective vision of available pathways

2.  The contradictory faces of art

-  Art as fictitious, imitative reproduction

-  Art as a breaking of patterns, as innovation

-  A transformative space for suffering

-  Art as research and creativity

-  Creativity as growth and development of human potential

3.  The contradictory faces of therapy

-  Therapy and rehabilitation as instruments of conditioning and social classification

-   Therapy as growth and development of latent potential

-  Rehabilitation: acquisition of abilities or recovery of “civil dignity”?

-  The development of human potential in a psychological-humanistic prospective

4.  Theatre and/or theatretherapy

-    the therapeutic potential of theatre

-  theatre as a phenomenon of catharsis and collective growth

-  Social Theatre: an occasion for civil art or an instrument of cultural conditioning

-  Pathogenic and psychotherapeutic aspects connected to theatrical activities

-  Iatrogenic effects of the theatre

5.  Psycotherapy and theatrical mediation: techniques and methodology

-  Expression and communication: between verbal and non verbal language

-  The work of self-observation

-  Somato-emotional handling

6.  The technique of self theatre-direction: elaboration and transformation of  experience

-  The inner spectator:  confronting oneself with one’s own suffering

-  Confronting and interacting with the group: relating distress and intersubjective         sharing

-  Confronting and interacting with the external spectator: the play, between performance and therapy

7.  Theatre and theatretherapy: what is the difference?

-  Theatretherapy as an intentional metamorphic path

- The modification of states of consciousness in theatrical experience

-  The psycho-homeopathic and psyco-allopathic prospective

-  The integration of the parts and the evolution of the self

8.  Roles and objectives

-  The role of the theatre operator in a therapeutic context

-  The role of the health care operator in a theatretherapy context

-  Evalutation and research: methodological difficulties and delimitations

-  Techniques of evaluation and resulting findings

9.  Meditation, mindfullness and Introspection

-  guided self-awareness exercises

-  the dynamic meditations

-  the “darkness meditation”

- Zazen meditation

-  “The Bubonic Plague” and rebirth

-  Entomy: activation of the insect mind

-  5 Elements meditation.