Dramatherapy

This paper was presented to the BADth annual conference at Bretton Hall, September 2005. It followed a workshop in which the participants prepared a short ‘Bouffonade’, which was performed as part of the presentation to the wider audience attending the paper. Actually, the performance interrupted my delivery of the paper, as part of the carnivalesque function of a Bouffonade is to disrupt formality and deflate authority. A description of the performance has been inserted below to give some idea of its content.

The following paper is based on research into a dramatic model of group supervision that was also informed by ideas from Jungian psychology. Postgraduate dramatherapy students were given the opportunity to reflect, embody and dramatise what they considered to be ‘significant moments’ from their placement practice over a period of ten weeks. A semi-structured interview was then carried out with each of the nine participants.

Analysis of their responses identified two emerging themes −1) a diversity of perspectives on the same session, where students who participated in the same work had different experiences and 2) working with the drama and the body in supervision offered the chance to reconnect with and investigate body-based experiences from practice.

Through continuing to use the art form of drama in supervision (in particular role-playing the client), it seemed that qualities and nuances of the session and the therapeutic relationship could be explored. In particular, some of the unconscious communication between therapist and client seemed to be exposed through working with the body and drama.

I introduced the Communicube as the Five Story Self Structure in my book, Drama, Psychotherapy and Psychosis: dramatherapy and psychodrama with people who hear voices (2004). Since then I have been doing workshops around Britain and therapists of many different orientations have been using it. I write this to bring you news of these developments in practice.