Can theater be a form of therapy?
In addition to being a recreational and fun activity, there is evidence that acting actively affects psychological well-being. Freud believed that art was a way to satisfy our drive urges, through the defense mechanism of sublimation. Doing theater boosts self-esteem and confidence in oneself and in others, activates concentration and creativity, expands one’s bodily and narrative expression, stimulates imagination and a sense of belonging to a group, and fosters collaboration and confrontation. In that very instant when we are in a theater, among other people, we get in touch with our deepest self but at the same time also with others. Perhaps this is also one of the great powers of this art so alive and deep: to create community.
The therapeutic aspects of theater have been demonstrated throughout history. The concept of catharsis was introduced byAristotleto express the peculiar effect Greek drama had on its spectators. The termcatharsiscomes from the Greek kátharsis, derived from katháirein, “topurify”: the liberation of the individual from contamination that harms or corrupts man’s nature.
An important precursor oftheater therapyis theMarquis De Sade(1740-1814) who, locked up in the asylum at Charenton, staged plays, some written by himself, in which patients acted.
Also in Aversa Hospital during the same period, Abbot John Mary Linguiti within his “moral cure” gave great importance to theatrical performances.
According to him, acting out a character whose “passion” or “fixed idea” is opposite to the one afflicting the sick person allows the latter to free himself from his original “fixed idea” and thus becomes a real therapeutic tool.
The real encounter between theater and psychology occurred around the 1960s fostered by some new resonances: the birth of theater workshops and a new training of the actor; theatrical anthropology; a renewed way of working in the psychotherapeutic setting; and the emergence of new psychological and psychotherapeutic theories.
Research theater, building on the reflections of the major masters of the twentieth century, proposes an anthropological vision of artistic practice (Grotowski, Brook, Barba).
Beginning with the historical avant-gardes that had provoked a radical renewal of theater (in dramaturgy, staging, acting, actor preparation, and the social role of theater) there emerged in the second part of the century a shift of interest no longer focused on the product, but on the process.
The “workshop,” in which actors and director work together on the training and preparation of the performance is proposed as a setting for research and experimentation.
Jerzy Grotowski in 1959 started the Theatre Workshop, which later received the status of “Acting Research Institute.” He proposes poverty in theater, the stripping away of all parasitic elements to arrive at unveiling the unexplored riches of this artistic form.
“The theater, thanks to the actor’s technique, this art in which a living organism struggles for higher motives, presents an opportunity for what we might call integration, the rejection of masks, the revealing of the true essence: a totality of physical-mental reactions.
This chance must be used in a disciplined way, with a full awareness of the responsibilities it implies. Itis in this that we can discern the therapeutic function of theater for humanity in today’s civilization.”
To become an actor what skills are required?
- excellent communication skills.
- expressiveness
- ability to work with others.
- memory and concentration.
- ability to adapt to different roles.
Not only diction, mimicry, tone of voice but also improvisational skills and athletic agility; adaptation, listening skills and cooperation; resilience, ability to handle changing situations.
What is meant by improvisation?
Theatrical improvisation is a form of theater where actors do not follow a defined script, but invent the text by improvising extemporaneously. theatrical art form in which two or more actors create a scene or play on the spot, without any preparation and often inspired by a suggestion from the audience. It is usually a comedic art form. Theatrical improvisation was already practiced in Ancient Greece by Aristophanes but it was with Plautus that it became a real discipline to be studied and trained in. Over the centuries, this technique has been developed both as a propaedeutic to acting in the broader sense and as an independent theatrical genre.
What is the structured script?
The constituent elements of a theatrical text are: – acts and scenes; – space and time; – characters; – captions and lines; – performance language. The acts are, in essence, the different parts into which the text is divided. In traditional theater, their number varies according to genre.
In thepreventivefield, actor’s practice acts on blocks such as shyness, fear of letting go, resistance to take on various roles as well as to make them one’s own, and relational difficulties, fostering creativity, mental flexibility, body awareness and communication;
Inrehabilitationit is used mainly with prisoners, drug addicts, cancer patients and patients with physical or intellectual disabilities. In this case, therapeutic theater is preparatory to resocialization and social reintegration as it offers opportunities to deconstruct current stigmatized constructions of the self and to reconstruct new and more powerful identities so as to redefine future horizons;
In thetherapeuticfield it is often used with psychiatric patients and appears to be very useful because it brings the “healthy” part in contact with the sick part, fostering their integration and acceptance as well as holding up and fortifying the intact core of the ego;
In educationand training with children and adolescents to explore and experiment with their current skills that those in the making through play and improvisation.