Origins
Drama therapy has its origins in the Upper Paleolithic period when priests began to use the arts in religious practices and for healing. Drama and dance were seen as being symbolic for invoking the idea of myths, rituals and storytelling. Theater grew organically out of these rituals, with ancient Greek theater being documented formally. At one of the festivals celebrating Dionysus, an actor named Thespis stepped into the foreground and created the first individual character performance; modern theater was conceived.
Aristotle wrote about catharsis in his Poetics, stating that tragedy should produce deep feelings that can be released to purge the senses of theatergoers. Aristotle very much saw drama as more than an educational tool; he saw it as a healing process. Indeed, Aristotle's theories are said to have influenced the study of catharsis through psychoanalysis from Freud onward.
In the U.S. the source of drama as therapy was at Hull House, in Chicago, where a theater movement grew and inspired youths to join drama clubs. The Northwestern University in Chicago developed educational theater and many therapists began their careers as creative teachers of the art form. These included Winifred Ward, Eleanor Irwin and Rosilyn Wilder. Later, a Viennese actress named Gertrud Schattner popularized the term drama therapy by teaching it to mental patients in a sanatorium and watching how their participation helped them achieve a new lease of life.
Drama Therapy Today
Therapists are specifically trained in psychology so that they can best understand and assist their clients, incorporating abnormal and general cases. They are also trained in drama and theater studies and psychotherapy, to enable them to steer their clients towards an emotional response through role-play. Creating a safe environment is paramount to the success of this type of therapy, so that the client can ‘let go' of their inhibitions and achieve a cathartic release, much the same as art therapy encourages an explosion of color on a canvas. The emphasis is not on the role-play or the canvas itself, it is on the reaction of the client and their ability to release their emotions.
Who Benefits from Drama Therapy?
Clients of drama therapy can be any individual who needs to express him or herself and cannot do so because of suppressed feelings of anxiety, fear or anger. Patients with mental health issues such as depression, autism and bipolar disorder are thought to benefit particularly well from this form of therapy. Drama therapy is also proving to be effective for alcohol and drug addicts. Drama allows the addict to embrace a fiction of sorts and to express themselves through voice and motion. The fiction may be related in some way to their actual addiction, the source of it and how they feel about it, or about other people who are encouraging them to reclaim their lives, or those they feel are inhibiting them.
Therapy Supported
Drama therapy is popular with people who are undergoing other types of therapy, as it is so supportive by nature. In Pennsylvania, U.S, there are inpatient and outpatient programs offered, with various buprenorphine doctors specializing in detoxification. The percentage of successful residents who achieve detox safely and on a continuing basis is impressive and this is the initial step to the process of full recovery. Drama therapy aids in the recovery of addicts, supporting a program such as that offered in Pennsylvania, and is proving to be highly effective among sufferers of addiction, whether they are recovering or facing the long road of withdrawal that lies ahead of them. Acknowledging the addiction and understanding its roots is the first step to recovery. Drama therapy enables sufferers to purge themselves of feelings of guilt, frustration, anger or denial, and the process of catharsis that drama naturally achieves through intense role play is helping people everywhere reclaim their lives today.
