Throughout my inquiry, I have come across many interesting pieces of literature regarding my topic of the use of Dramatheraoy within drama teaching. However, one book I ended up purchasing has been central to my inquiry. The book is called 'Dramatherapy and Drama Education: exploring the space between disciplines' by Clive Holmwood.
Clive has been part of both professions, drama teaching and Dramatherapy, therefore what he has to say is incredibly interesting. His book was published in 2014 so also a great piece of literature to display what is happening now in the profession. His book explores social, political, therapeutic and artistic influences, discussing how the two fields are linked. I have made many notes so far whilst reading his book so thought I would share some of the things I jotted down:
Clive based the core of his research in actual practice. His struggles are narrated with sensitivity and honestly. His book is perfect for any teacher who wonders - as increasing numbers must these days - about the personal, affective and emotional needs of children and ways in which the arts, persistently ignored and downgraded by the government, can feed and nourish their well being.
Drama helps children find their own playful ways to express, represent, performance and create. Also help them understand situations and emotions.
Clive found concern over the fact drama teachers and dramatherapists are kept at arms length of each other. He created this book to share a personal journey of how these two fields connect and can learn from sharing knowledge.
There is a lack of depth and breadth in the literature on dramatherapy compared to other professions like psychotherapy and psychology. Dramatherapy is emerging rather than established.
Dramatherapy is a form of psychological therapy in which all of the performance arts are utilised within the therapeutic relationship. Drama therapists are both artists and clinicians and draw on their trainings in theatre/drama and therapy to create methods to engage clients in effecting psychological, emotional and social changes.
"My latest thinking is that all drama is about the same thing....about people creating a distance between the every day reality and the reality of imagination." (Professor Robert Landy, one of the founders of Dramatherapy)
In the last few years, Dramatherapy seems to be specifically aligned to health care and medicine rather than education.
During The Great Debate at Ruskin College in 1976, Callaghan said:
"The goals for our education, from nursery school through to adult education are clear enough. They are to equip children to the best of their ability for a lively, constructive place in society and also to fit them to do a job of work. Not one or the other but both."
This led to grater government involvement in education and Thatcher's legacy of a national curriculum.
1960s-1980s - education with the management of the economy in mind. There are now more options of getting jobs in the arts.
Drama in education pioneers: Caldwell Cook (1917)
Peter Slade (1954)
Influenced by people like US educator John Dewey.
The book touches on how kids in schools are judged on their exam results nowadays. Kids learn to regergatate knowledge, like a memory test, but could they actually apply that knowledge to something, do they actually understand it.
I can absolutely relate to this. At school I excelled in exams but I just learnt the work like a script. I had a great memory so would just learn pages and pages of information. I had no idea what half of it meant!
"Mankind likes to think in extreme opposites. It is given to formulating it's beliefs in terms if either-ors, between which it recognises no intermediate possibilities." (Dewey 1938:1)
It's important to have an inter-disciplinary state between institutions, organisations and professions.
Dramatherapy is one way of allowing individuals to describe, represent and understand aspects of their life froma fresh perspective.
There is a section in the book that relates to literature links. However, there are current debates with the drama therapy profession around the purpose and use of ritual within training.
Jones (1996a:102) discusses that involvement in dramatic activity with Dramatherapy allows a shift to occur for a client to re-engage with the emotional and creative aspects of themselves.
"Children can be fractious and unpleasant, and that creative stimulation which they have to continuously inject into the successful drama lesson makes quite unique demands on drama teachers." (Hombrook 1998:44)
"The triangle concept describes the way the therapist, the client and the art form create dramatherapy space together." Phil Jones (2010:10)
Dramatherapy is traditionally seen as mental health therefore service is located in hospitals and clinics, not schools.
Dramatherapy allowsnthe client to stand back from difficult material by using drama through metaphor or symbol. Draws a parallel between actual (social) space and psychological space.
Involvement in dramatic activity in Dramatherapy sessions allows a client to re engage with the emotional and creative aspect of themselves.
"I'm sure Dramatherapy will be the political theatre of the future." (Baron Cohen and the king 1997:283)
"Dramatherapy is a practical way of taking stock of what is going on around us in the world." (Warren and Grainger (2000:160)
Dramatherapists work with distance as a safe mechanism to protect clients from difficult emotions.
Nussbaum (1986) sees it more as clarifying and learning through emotion and feeling, drawing in ideas of Brecht and Boal, which is similar to drama teachers.
"The separation between meaning and unthinking or irrational emotion carries a complexity of implications for drama and for therapy. For it is within the spaces between these levels of reality and identity that understanding and healing can occur." (Landy on Brecht 1997:368)
"Dramatherapy is a powerful method of healing because it provides a way to re experience pain, sometimes overwhelming pain, through the safety of aesthetic distance." (Landy 1997:372)
