Drama Therapy – Page 4 – Drama Therapy Central

February 3, 2017October 29, 2022

Community Action Settings

Drama is an unbeatable way to provide cohesion and promote understanding at the community level. There are many drama therapists who do this work.

Armand Volkas, RDT/BCT, brings together groups from cultures that have become enemies due to war and historical trauma. Using Playback Theatre, Sociodrama, and other drama therapy techniques to allow people to tell their stories, discover their human connection, build trust, open communication, and begin to heal the rifts. He has worked around the world, bringing together descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors and the Third Reich, Japanese and Chinese over the traumas created by the rape of Nanjing, African-American and European Americans in relation to the traumas of slavery. He calls this powerful and effective work “Healing the Wounds of History.”

STAND Together is an acronym for “Spirit, Teamwork, and New Determination Together,” one of the oldest self-advocacy groups for adults with developmental disabilities in the state of Maryland. Through monthly meetings and activities, STAND Together members learn how to stand up for themselves and develop their leadership skills, speaking out about the rights of people with disabilities. I facilitated their creation of a dramatic training module for new employees of the Montgomery County ARC to ensure that residents in their group homes and programs would be treated with respect. Group home support staff, job coaches, and other service providers for people who have disabilities are often so focused on “doing their job” that they treat residents as children or as patients, rather than as adults living independently.

Through drama, we explored the basic rights of individuals with developmental disabilities and identified situations in their personal lives in which their rights had been violated or in which they had been embarrassed by insensitive caregivers. We brainstormed more appropriate ways of treatment which showed respect. The scenarios we created demonstrated examples of inappropriate and appropriate treatment. These were incorporated into the monthly ARC training for new employees, allowing the people receiving services to define the manner in which they wanted their services delivered.

Deborah Zuver, RDT/BCT, works with a program called Acting for Advocacy in North Carolina. She trains adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities how to be self-advocates through drama therapy techniques and prepares them to present self-advocacy training to peers so that they can also learn to advocate for themselves.

February 3, 2017October 29, 2022

Corrections Settings

Rehearsal of "12 Angry Lebanese" in Roumieh Prison, Lebanon — Rehearsal of “12 Angry Lebanese” in Roumieh Prison, Lebanon

Correctional facilities (prisons, forensic units, and juvenile detention centers) offer long-term opportunities for work with clients, but within systems that more often are focused on punishment than therapeutic intervention. Therapists of all kinds express frustration at their attempts to create behavioral change in institutions of this kind. However, drama therapists love the challenge of working with these clients.

Brandon Brawner, RDT, worked for many years in San Francisco prisons using video techniques. Inmates created characters and stories that expressed their concerns about their personal struggles or group issues and enacted their concerns about their personal struggles on video. Some are highly fictional: in one short film, based on the television show Star Trek, a group of prisoners is transported to the USS Enterprise to get help with anger management skills from Captain Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew. Other films are psychodramatic: a prisoner acts out what his journey home might be like after his release and faces the temptations of “old friends” who want to entice him back into a life of crime. Brandon also worked with ex-convicts, helping them explore their struggles to “go straight” once they are released.

There is a drama therapy program currently being run by Barbara Wiebe, RDT, at the North Texas State Hospital forensic unit in Vernon, Texas, for clients who have committed crimes but have been found not competent to stand trial because of mental illness. These clients are manifestly dangerous to themselves and others. Drama groups at NTSH can meet as often as three times per week, developing basic social interaction skills and self-expression through movement and simple drama games. They use role play, masks, performance, and very simplified Playback Theatre to work on therapeutic issues relating to anger management, substance abuse, and coping mechanisms.

Zeina Daccache directing "12 Angry Lebanese" in Roumieh Prison, Lebanon — Zeina Daccache directing “12 Angry Lebanese” in Roumieh Prison, Lebanon

In Lebanon, Zeina Daccache, RDT-BCT has worked with men in Roumieh Prison (pictured at the top of this page) and with women in a women’s prison. 12 Angry Lebanese, the Documentary is a moving film of her work in Roumieh as she worked on a production of 12 Angry Men. She followed these up with other documentaries on the women’s prison, Scherazade in Baabda, with clients who were mentally ill and in prison (The Blue Inmates), and others. These documentaries have played in commercial houses and won a number of awards at international film festivals