Projective
Drama therapy, with roots in the creative process, deals with hypothetical situations and fantasy and uses primarily projective techniques. By projecting feelings, attitudes and issues through art, cartooning, fabrics, life-size dolls, masks, objects, puppets, photo and video therapy, participants invite their creativity to come forth while achieving distance from feeling vulnerable and exposed. This distance creates a safe, nurturing place where individuals trust and begin to express their spontaneity in thoughts, feelings and ideas. A safe environment and an empathetic drama therapist invite the participants explore issues, learn more about themselves, and grow.
- Art
Art shows participants’ responses to their created products as reflections of an individual’s development, abilities, personality, interests, concerns and conflicts. Art offers a way of reconciling emotional conflicts, fostering self-awareness, developing social skills, managing behavior, solving problems, reducing anxiety, aiding reality orientation and increasing self-esteem. Art may be used in any part of the drama therapy session, as a warm-up, main activity, or closure. - Cartooning
Cartooning distances the participants from the material and provides a creative tool for activating the imagination. In working with cartooning, the drama therapist uses existing cartoon characters, strips or single frames and encourages participants to create their own significant fantasy or life script scenes. - Fabrics
Various colors, textures and shapes of fabric and scarves assist the participant in establishing roles, creating a scene, showing a conflict and expressing emotions. The sensory aspects of fabrics (i.e. rough, silky, soft, or nubby) invite the participant to express and explore feelings. - Life-Size Dolls
Life-size dolls open up a whole creative world of possibilities. Dolls may be cast as family members, significant others, narrator, teacher, child and other important characters in stories yet to come. A life size doll can also represent an externalized problem (i.e. anger) or that inner voice that comes forth in a discovery of personal agency or an auxiliary character in the retelling of a personal history. - Masks
Through using a mask, participants learn more about themselves, and reveal feelings, emotions and perceptions previously not expressed. Participants experience the world with a new freedom and creativity. The mask transforms the person into a persona. The mask as persona helps the individual explore aspects of the self, and functions as a double of the person. - Objects
Objects open up possibilities for roles, stories, conflicts and significant moments to come forth. These objects may be placed in sand, on a flat surface or structure of different levels or in an arrangement of fabrics. Participants show a preferred scene, present world, preferred world, future scene or special place. Objects provide a range of possibilities to assist persons to take on roles and tell stories while working in a safe environment. - Puppets
Puppets engage all age groups. They introduce values and problem-solving skills, spark new ideas, establish communication, and ease emotional problems. Simply stated, puppets promote communication and expression of feelings. The puppet distances the participant and allows hidden emotions and feelings to be expressed. A puppet invites the creative release of energies and expressive abilities. Puppets function as a projective device allowing the participant to reveal hidden emotions and conflicts. - Phototherapy
Phototherapy uses photography or photographic materials under the guidance of a trained therapist, to reduce or relieve painful psychological symptoms and to facilitate psychological growth and therapeutic change. Integrating phototherapy into drama therapy can help accomplish the following goals : (1) evoke emotional states; (2) elicitat verbal response or confrontation; (3) model and or master a skill; (4) facilitate socialization and (5) inspire creativity and expression. - Videotherapy
There has been a tremendous surge of interest in using video in drama therapy. Research shows that video “confrontation” helps participants to see how others see them, as well as evaluate the effect of their behavior on others. Research also shows that participants come to deeper insights about themselves sooner with the use of Videotherapy. In the hands of a trained drama therapist, video and drama interventions serve to help a person realize goals of behavior change, insight, catharsis and enhanced self-esteem.
Psychodramatic
Psychodramatic techniques occur usually occur in the enactment phase and assist in the development of the roles, the setting of the scene, inviting empathy, gaining insight into the inner life of the role and accessing feelings. Drama therapists utilize these techniques in enacting stories, dreams, fairytales and in many other ways. These techniques are often combined with the projective. For example, a drama therapist may interview a puppet or invite an object into a soliloquy.
- Role Reversal
Taking the place of others in life which can help develop emotional insights in the others’ situations and build empathy.
- Self Introduction
Assuming a role in the drama and introducing yourself.
- Interviewing
Interviewing a participant in role as protagonist or auxiliary in the scene or as an object in the environment as a source of information about the person being played and to actually experience being the person from the inside out rather than the outside in.
- Double
Spontaneously standing behind the protagonist and speaking out or “doubling” for what one imagines is going on within the inner world of the protagonist.
- Soliloquy
The protagonist drops out of the scene for a moment and soliloquizes about what is going on in their inner world.
Other Drama Therapy Techniques
- Ritual
Creating rituals provides a way to concretize changes (i.e. new life direction), clarify important values, make transitions, signify important decisions and make public these important landmarks. - Storytelling and Dramatization
Developing stories and/or using meaningful written stories helps persons activate their creative energies as well as examine alternative solutions to problems. Stories shape persons’ lives and offer a sense of coherence, continuity and purpose. We grow as persons as we live through and perform our stories. Acting out a story assists the participant to understand what is happening from the prospective of the role which invites sensitivity and understanding. - Externalization
Externalization is a drama therapy technique which separates the person from the problem, and allows the person to take a more empowering stance. Externalization frees the person from problem-saturated fixed descriptions of their lives, and offers other choices. Externalizing invites persons to identify and develop a new relationship with the problem, and in the process, create new unique re-descriptions of themselves and their relationships which provide ingredients for new life scenarios. - Games
Drama Therapy Games combine analytical thinking about problems with emotional expressive activity providing a dynamic model for individual and group work. The game moves a group gently into action and breaks down group inhibitions allowing individuals to trust and feel comfortable. The game structure combined with drama therapy allows a person to: develop interaction and sense of group play, create trust and bond in a group, provide a safe place to experiment, experience spontaneity, encourage emotional growth, establish more comfortable feelings, safely express thoughts and feelings, develop problem solving skills, learn experientially, focus attention, provide a structure for therapy goals to be met and gain insight.