As You Like It: Different Techniques of Performance Therapy

Performance or theater/drama therapy is a validated and established form of therapy that makes use of different types of theater techniques and exercises to make one confront mental health challenges, express themselves, and gain confidence. This kind of therapy can be utilized on a wide range of individuals and generally, no prior experience is required to practice it. The evidence backing the effectiveness of this form of therapy is compelling as is the intuitive logic behind its appeal.

As a form of therapy, theater is intended to help individuals break out of any rigid roles or frameworks that they have been limiting themselves to and explore their inner functioning and experience. Psychiatrist Jacob Moreno was the first to conceptualize what was known as ‘psychodrama’ back in the 1930s. At the time, psychodrama went against the norm as it delineated a form of psychology that focused more on the present and future rather than the past. A typical psychodrama session looked something like this:

● The protagonist was the sole focus of the session.

● Participants (persons undergoing therapy) act out their emotions by reacting to others.

● Mirroring and role reversal are used to better understand their feelings and behaviors, as well as the feelings and behaviors of others.

● Spontaneity and creativity are emphasized as propellers of progress towards healing.

From the success of the above therapy technique, people realized the positive effects of expression of difficult emotions through the medium of theater. Thereafter, drama therapy arose as a field. The field began to take shape after the North American Drama Therapy Association was established in 1979, giving this form of therapy a specialized organization to centralize the research, practice, and sharing of information.

There are a total of nine core processes through which drama therapy facilitates change in participants. These include:

1. Dramatic projection: a technique that allows participants to project their deep-seated emotions and feelings
2. Personification and impersonation: techniques in which participants can express their emotions and experience through role-play or through an object
3. Interactive audience and witnessing: refers to the participant or group taking on the role of the audience
4. Playing: spontaneous problem-solving, in which a play space is created and objects are actively repurposed into new roles
5. Empathy and distancing: a technique that allows the participants to engage or disengage with the material that resonates with their inner conflicts
6. Life-drama connection: a technique in which participants use dramatic projection to analyze their personal emotions or issues
7. Transformation: the structure of telling a story, an inherent aspect of what happens in theater
8. Embodiment: the physical expression of personal material
9. Therapeutic performance technique: the use of theatrical performance in a healing and therapeutic manner to work through the participants’ personal issues and experiences

Besides the nine core techniques, other processes such as role-playing, projective play, script, and storytelling, miming, etc. are also employed for this form of therapy.