Between Drama Education and Drama Therapy: International Approaches to Successful Navigation

Andrew M. GainesJason D. Butler, and Clive Holmwood

To Cite this Article

Gaines, A.M., Butler, J.D., & Holmwood, C. (2015). Between Drama Education and Drama Therapy:  International Approaches to Successful Navigation. p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e, 2.


Abstract

This article describes a workshop with approximately 30 drama educators, presented at the 2013 congress of the International Drama/Education Association (IDEA) that examined the overlap of drama education and drama therapy. Using the workshop experience as a backdrop, the authors discuss concepts within drama therapy that might serve to inform the use of emotion within the applied theatre space. The distinction between psychodrama and drama therapy is clarified and basic drama therapy concepts are explained. Contrary to the facilitators’ expectations, the workshop experience evoked several unifying questions and issues for participants: “How can we simultaneously address both ends of the emotional/expressive spectrum? How can I get my over-expressive students to settle down and participate so that I can attend to the less expressive students?” Questions of emotion regulation seemed to problematize classroom management concerns rather than galvanize discourse about boundaries between education and therapy. Through a dialogic exploration using forum theatre, the workshop participants engaged with their own relationship to the topics and explored potential solutions. The drama therapy concept of aesthetic distance was highlighted as a means to helping educational theatre practitioners navigate the potentially complex experiences when dealing with emotional involvement. This concept would allow for a clearer establishment of intrapersonal and interpersonal boundaries within the creation and exploration of theatre and drama. The article also calls for more substantial dialogues between applied drama/theatre professionals in order to more fully explore how to navigate the interstices between education and therapy.

Keywords

Drama therapy, educational theatre, applied theatre, psychodrama, interdisciplinary, teaching, ethics.


At the 2004 International Drama/Theatre Education Association (IDEA) congress in Ottawa, Dr. Adam Blatner, MD convened a Special Interest Group (SIG) to examine the paradoxical and ambiguous zones overlapping drama education and therapy. Nearly a decade later at the 2013 IDEA in Paris, Gaines (USA) initiated and chaired an international collaboration with fellow drama therapists and drama educators, Butler (Canada) and Holmwood (UK). Driven by our respective research interests in the topic, we were compelled to revisit Dr. Blatner’s SIG, and provide a forum to promote further dialogue between fields. Furthermore, scholars from across disciplines (Landy & Montgomery, 2012; Prendergast & Saxton, 2013) have urged further conversation around blurry practices within applied drama/theatre, and Taylor (2003) has specifically invited an exploration of examples of ethical dilemmas from the field. With teachers and therapists connected as helping professions, we hoped to exchange best practices to effectively assist our constituents to navigate the liminal spaces found betwixt and between (Turner, 1967) applied dramatic experiences, primarily informed from the point of view of drama therapy. In this article, we will expand upon our shared interest in this arena, reflect on our workshop experience, and highlight some key takeaways.

We began our workshop by citing this example: In the context of drama education or applied drama, have you ever said or heard this disclaimer before the process began? “What we are about to do is not therapy. However, it might be therapeutic.” The majority of our 30 workshop participants confirmed such caveats were commonly used, especially within the context of highly-charged settings often serving multiple agendas of social service (e.g., prisons, hospitals, schools for special populations, or organizations dedicated to serving underserved, oppressed, or marginalized populations). Even in less charged settings, Holmwood’s (2014) research has shown that the same exercises can be used in drama education as well as drama therapy sessions, wherein such an announcement might be heard. In this vein, Prentki & Preston (2009) also underlined:

Today many practitioners of applied theatre are usually quick to assert that they are not therapists, either by training or inclination, and are concerned with social transformation rather than individual pathologies of rehabilitation. However, although purpose and outcome may be sharply differentiated, the kinds of processes through which the patient/participants are put are frequently very similar. (p. 12)

Prentki and Preston’s observations suggest that in the context of social activism, such a discrepancy can also be a helpful way to focus a group away from more personal agendas and towards a larger societal mindset. Yet this wider focus does not reliably circumscribe creative activities that could be construed as therapy. We also presumed that the intention behind some drama leaders’ distinctions away from “therapy” might serve to simultaneously exempt facilitators from liability, and more importantly, protect and empower students to assume personal responsibility for their own safety. Regardless of the intent, we argue that simply announcing that the scope of the activities “might be therapeutic” remains generally insufficient to prevent slippage into quasi-therapy. Moreover, we maintain that relying upon subtle linguistic connotations (see Holmwood: 2014: 99): raises significant ethical questions, as it places an egregiously large portion of responsibility on the participants to determine the boundaries between what is therapy and the therapeutic. In our view and experience, these dilemmas particularly arise when participants are too vulnerable to protect themselves or independently assert healthy boundaries. Despite the best of one’s intentions, drama conventions and ploys that invite participants to tap into potentially dangerous inner spaces can unwittingly re-wound and prolong a healing process already underway. And in the context of a group experience, facilitators with or without therapy training cannot dependably control when “one student’s therapeutic indulgence may overstep the threshold of another’s vulnerability” (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995, p. 84).

Courtney (1989) deliberated that while creative arts teachers develop a natural and specific intuition to support the emotional needs of students – they are not therapists. However, scholarly attempts to identify specific distinguishing practices between “support” and “therapy” in arts education have been scant. Meanwhile, creative arts therapists can simultaneously assume the role of a teacher when they educate clients how to assume healthier behaviors, consider alternative points of view, cognitively reframe threatening paradigms, or better understand their condition (See Holmwood:2014:21-22 on catharsis versus cognition). To complicate matters further, the New York State Department of Education’s Code of Ethics states that, “…educators nurture the intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and civic potential of each student.” Consistent with this ethical charge, Blatner personally reported from his SIG that well-intentioned teachers of all subjects are frequently asked to support understaffed facilities and multitask in a quasi-therapy role, working beyond their scope of practice and training, often without adequate supervision. In contrast, drama therapists are specifically trained and supervised to intentionally regulate and manage degrees of emotional and psychological distance, guiding clients to integrate the extremes of their experience. Therefore, we presumed that representatives from both fields could exchange valuable insights to navigate the boundaries between our shared practices. Further, we speculated that specific drama therapy techniques used to create psychic distance could also help teachers maintain safer spaces, particularly when engaging with personal material and emotionally transformative practices. For example, when applied theatre performers give public testimony on themes Cohen-Cruz (2010) calls “enormous acts,” she observed the challenge of striking an elegant balance:

the act[s] of sharing responses…and the performance itself…were ways art provides a coming to terms with enormous acts …a combination of distance and intimacy…By extending the circle beyond a therapeutic session but rather open to a whole public, one must more specifically frame it, not knowing who will be part of the audience and how much they know. (p. 72)

Through this article, we hope the reader will deepen their understanding of aesthetic framing to more effectively and ethically serve individuals, groups, or communities through drama/theatre practices.

Before we move further, let us clarify what drama therapy is and is not. The North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA, 2013) defines drama therapy as:

…the intentional use of drama and/or theater processes to achieve therapeutic goals. Drama therapy is active and experiential. This approach can provide the context for participants to tell their stories, set goals and solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. Through drama, the depth and breadth of inner experience can be actively explored and interpersonal relationship skills can be enhanced. Participants can expand their repertoire of dramatic roles to find that their own life roles have been strengthened.

And the British Association of Dramatherapists (BADth, 2013) (spelled with one word in the United Kingdom, as used by Slade in 1958) define their practice as:

…a form of psychological therapy in which all of the performance arts are utilised within the therapeutic relationship. Dramatherapists 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. The therapy gives equal validity to body and mind within the dramatic context; stories, myths, playtexts, puppetry, masks and improvisation are examples of the range of artistic interventions a Dramatherapist may employ. These will enable the client to explore difficult and painful life experiences through an indirect approach.

The last two words of the BADth definition offer a good segue into a key distinction between drama therapy and psychodrama. Whereas drama therapy typically takes an oblique and distanced approach to healing through fiction and metaphor, psychodrama clients often portray themselves as the protagonist in reenactments of their own autobiographical story in order to resolve some particular issue (Blatner, 2007). However, Landy (1994) also pointed out that the bifurcation is not so exact. One’s enactment of a role can be modulated for less distance through a more psychodramatic portrayal or can be imbued with more distance by basing it in the projected role of another (often through an inanimate object such as a puppet or mask). And despite these distinctions, some might place psychodrama as an approach within the overarching category of drama therapy (See Johnson & Emunah, 2009 for a comprehensive overview of drama therapy practices).

In essence, drama therapists intentionally adjust clients’ level of engagement in the dramatic encounter, facilitating a kind of dialogic oscillation that rebalances their clients’ emotional, psychosocial, somatic, and spiritual experiences. While some drama therapy modulations can be quite subtle, other interventions can lead clients to find the far edges of their tolerance. In either case, the drama therapist is essentially trying to help clients to discover and live paradoxically within a particular “point midway between the two extremes of overdistance and underdistance…at aesthetic distance, where catharsis can occur…a confluence of thought and feeling” (Landy, 1994, p. 113). In Table 1.1, Gaines organizes the qualities of each pole, as described by Landy. These finer distinctions are important to highlight, particularly because similar concepts are also prominent in drama-in-education and applied theatre theory and practices. For instance, Gavin Bolton (1979) stated in Towards a Theory of Drama in Education that, “Drama is a metaphor. Its meaning lies not in the actual context nor in the fictitious one, but in the dialectic set up between the two” (p. 128).

The confusion between psychodrama and drama therapy might be further confounded by the instances in which the drama education literature has attempted to delineate the boundaries of which practices and outcomes might constitute a “therapeutic” designation:

…the term therapeutic does not imply psychodrama or sociodrama but rather points to an aspect of an art form in which children find pleasure, emotional release, mental stimulation, personal satisfaction through success, and most of all, a chance to use and stretch their imaginations. (McCaslin, 1994, p. 317)

Table 1.1
Distance Model of Drama Therapy
(Gaines, 2005: based on Landy, 1994 and Scheff, 1979)

Underdistance Aesthetic Distance Overdistance
Me Me AND Not Me Not Me
Reality Liminal Fiction
Impulsive Fluid, Spontaneous Rigid
Too Close Boundaries Withdrawn
Overwhelmed Self-Regulated Repressed
Manic Grounded Depressed
Fused Related Alienated
Hyper Integrated Dissociated
All Paradox Nothing
Drama Therapy
Dialogic oscillation modulates balance and promotes self-regulation

However, while McCaslin’s “therapeutic” pointed to some of the key benefits of dramatic play for a wide range of participants, she erroneously conflated psychodrama and sociodrama. To clarify briefly, sociodrama is an extension of Moreno’s (1953) psychodrama where groups create and explore abstracted, shared/composite roles found in social issues most relevant to the participants present. The inferred confusions are understandable, as some of the shared practices maintain parallel aims to help develop positive affects, identity, interpersonal connection, and insight. Ironically, sociodrama is an aesthetically distanced approach highly suitable for educators and community practitioners interested in using safer methods to explore the power of drama as a change-agent (See Wiener, Adderley, & Kirk, 2011 for a comprehensive anthology).

As another example of a shared conceptual base, Helen Nicholson (2011) expanded on the function of metaphors in her book Theatre, Education, and Performance: The Map and the Story:

It has long been understood that theatre offers young people a transitional space in which to shape, disrupt and interpret narratives, both fictional and real, and the methodologies and pedagogies of theatre education depend on interactivity. Participating in theatre can offer young people a chance to produce equitable spaces in which to work, in which they can be ‘me and not me’, thereby meeting the alterity in themselves and encountering themselves as others. (p. 213)

Whilst Nicholson did not mention drama therapy or psychodrama as key contributors to the development of paratheatrical applications, Prendergast and Saxton (2013) validated the need for our research when they stated, “For an applied drama facilitator, understanding the difference between drama as therapy and drama as therapeutic is central” (p. 21).

The breadth and depth of these professional intersections warranted a five-day SIG, yet we attempted to consolidate the sizeable issue by focusing our intent for a ninety-minute session. We aimed to offer a forum in which our participants could gain additional:

– Community connections, internationally and across disciplines

– Strategies to navigate the liminal space between drama therapy, educational theatre, drama-in-education, and applied drama

– Opportunities to share skills, stories, and teach one another (ourselves included)

– Collective reaffirmations of the power of theatre as a tool for change

Despite all our preparation and focus, as three drama therapists, we were not sure what to expect upon entering the room of IDEA attendees. Would the participants be familiar with drama therapy? How would our work be received? Would we be encountering individuals from cultures where the very idea of therapy was an unknown? Would there be participants who would view us as outsiders, as a potentially oppressive other attempting to dictate practice?

Rather than beginning with unpacking all of these distinctions and definitions of practice, we chose to warm up the group and offer provocations that would help problematize core issues. We first created an embodied map of the world, and located that the vast majority of our participants were from Europe and Australasia with a few representatives from other parts of the world. We then posed a few questions to the group and had them physically place themselves along various spectrograms, one of J. L. Moreno’s (1934) sociometric methods of assessing groups along a continuum, by standing on an imaginary line between poles such as agree/disagree. For instance, we used the prompt, “I understand the difference between therapy and therapeutic.” We had anticipated this spectrogram might cause some debate; in our own discussions we had found it difficult to articulate the difference. However, with the exception of one person declaring total disagreement, our participants grouped themselves distinctly toward the affirmative end of the spectrum, agreeing that they did understand the differences. As volunteers began dialoguing about why they chose to stand where they did, it became clear that a question of language was at play. Several individuals for whom English was not their first language stated that therapeutic and therapy were the same thing – one member clarified that “therapeutic” was an adjective and “therapy” was a noun. Our notions of therapy and therapeutic were more complex, and as facilitators, we could not afford to devote much more time on this particular topic.

Rather, we segued into asking participants to form smaller subgroups in which they could share stories of situations in drama education, particularly where they had encountered challenges around balancing emotion between at least one teacher and one student. Among the situations offered, two themes emerged representing different ends of a spectrum. Whereas some educators wanted tools for helping their more passive students open up, share more emotion, and connect with the material, other educators struggled to contain students who were too expressive to take in their fellow students.

We invited each subgroup to chose one of their stories and construct a tableau, exemplifying the drama at its apex. One group sculpture in particular highlighted a discussion that seemed to be occurring in many groups, and it naturally became our workshop’s linchpin. On one side of the image were two loud and energetic students, demanding attention and taking up a substantial amount of space. On the other side, two students sat with their arms wrapped around their knees, looking away – seemingly introspective or disinterested. Caught between the two sides was the teacher, one arm outstretched in a controlling motion to the first group, countered by a gaze pleading toward the secluded students. This image, more than anything, illustrated central questions of the group: How can we simultaneously address both ends of the emotional/expressive spectrum? How can I get my over-expressive students to settle down and participate so that I can attend to the less expressive students?

It became clear, at least in the context of how we had structured the workshop, that for an educator the response to our provocation often came down to a matter of classroom management. That is, the students who were less expressive ended up receiving less of the teacher’s time and attention because of the high demands of the more expressive students. Borrowing from forum theatre (Boal, 1979), we activated this sculpture into a fully enacted scene, and then invited a few individuals to freeze the action, join in, and take turns playing the role of teacher, experimenting with various solutions. Again, most interventions offered explored the use of various classroom management techniques.

In our post-workshop reflections, we were surprised by the direction in which this group wanted to focus. In our planning discussions, we had predicted the central scene for our workshop would be about students who either waded into emotionally dangerous terrain, or would feature students who disclosed personal information that was inappropriate for a classroom setting. We identified these situations as prototypical examples of when the instructor would need to pull participants back and create more distance from the emotional trigger – cases where the line between therapeutic and therapy might potentially be crossed. At this point, our workshop participants seemed less interested in this aspect of the discussion. The quality of our dialogue shifted significantly as we transitioned into the final portion of the workshop, which was predominately didactic.

We shared the drama therapy model of aesthetic distance, using the table Gaines created from his research (Table 1.1) of Landy’s (1994) study of Scheff (1979), who outlined four main strategies used by therapists to help clients rebalance their underdistanced experience towards a more aesthetically distanced and balanced frame:

– Present versus past time frame

– Fictional events versus reality-based events

– Rapid review of past events versus a detailed recollection of the past

– Use of positive emotions versus negative ones (p. 117)

Landy (1994) summarized that, “In overdistancing, the therapist would focus upon a present time frame, fictional events, rapid review, positive emotions, and projected role-playing” (p. 117). While we did not directly address the specific classroom management concerns that came up as part of the workshop, participants seemed to value the offered concrete distancing strategies that could help teachers work with emotions within the classroom setting.

However, in the final question and answer period, we found there were still some questions as to what a drama therapist actually does. Some participants appeared to be puzzled that the same activities could be used by both drama therapists and theatre educators but with different intents. Perhaps in the minds of some, drama therapy had separate tools and interventions, a clear difference that would distinguish it from educational or applied drama practices. Indeed, most of our workshop participants further validated Holmwood’s (2014) research findings that suggested drama educators tend to make assumptive conclusions about what defines the practice of drama therapy.

To this point, at the end of our session, we asked the group to line up again on a spectrogram of whether they felt they understood the differences between the words therapy and therapeutic, just as we did at the beginning. The whole group remained in similar, if not slightly more positive positions indicating they did understand, or at least understood more so than at the beginning. Yet this time, the person who originally did not know the difference joined them. However a straw poll indicated that a third to a half of the 30 or so people in the room had some previous rudimentary knowledge of drama therapy, with one drama therapist being amongst the group. Whilst this assessment method was not rigorous by any means, the feedback still seemed consistent with Holmwood’s research suggesting that teachers appear to understand these issues without ever really having studied them to any great extent. It would have been interesting to find out why the one individual who could not initially distinguish between therapy and therapeutic now appeared to fully understand at the end, however our allotted time was complete.

When we looked at the workshop as informing our research about the nexus of drama therapy and drama education, the group participation as a whole suggested two main issues, the first of which involved semantics. As the workshop leaders, we presumed our participants were dealing with complex issues that were difficult to quantify and delineate: when is drama-in-education similar to therapy, when does the drama then become therapy, and what ethical and other issues are involved in this navigation? However, from the perspective of the drama educators in this group, these distinctions did not appear to warrant such a depth of analysis. Considering how significantly language and semantics were initially brought to the fore, we wondered if some participants understood the literal meaning of therapeutic without a deeper understanding of its more nuanced usage in various contexts. Language barriers notwithstanding, Holmwood’s (2014, p. 99) research has also shown that drama educators and drama therapists with English as their mother tongue can also share vastly different interpretations of the same drama-based work from very different contextual perspectives using the same words.

The second major research issue, also connected to linguistics, was more pragmatic. The educators present in our workshop appeared at times surprised that drama therapists used a) dramatic techniques and b) that the techniques were similar (if not the same techniques) to those used within a drama class. As part of our more didactic segment, we attempted to convey how the theoretical constructs underpinning drama therapy are different, but not necessarily the techniques used in the process.

Placing our shared methods within the framework of aesthetic distance seemed to help participants to see their pedagogy from a drama therapy perspective, which might have helped some individuals clarify what drama therapy is and how it might work. The encompassing scope of aesthetic distance theory might also explain why, at the end of the workshop, everyone was able to declare they further understood the differences between therapeutic and therapy. As to the points of confusion along the way, we suspect this might be due to the paradoxical and liminal realities created by both drama/theatre enactments, whether applied for education or a mental health intervention. Landy (1994) explains that when these overlapping realities occur outside of everyday life, but remain reflective of it, the two can occur simultaneously:

It is within the space between these two realities that the drama therapist best functions. His goal is to help the client better understand the everyday reality through working within the dramatic reality. (p. 26)

From a drama therapy perspective, guiding (and teaching) clients to find the delicate and mercurial zone of aesthetic distance provides a healing space that can contain and integrate contradictory realities, roles, thoughts, and feelings. Yet from a drama-in-education and applied drama perspective, helping constituents towards the same aesthetic distance allows for a substantial depth of feeling, while maintaining a healthy psychic boundary that is neither too personal nor too hollow. If aesthetic distance is an optimal psychic space for constituents within a wide range of settings, this might substantiate the need to further delineate overlapping therapy/therapeutic practices.

An educator in our workshop raised one final difficulty. In his experience, teenagers would likely find the aesthetically distanced experience to be too boring. He contended that the excitement of drama, from their point of view, was found in the extremities of emotion, not balance. To this very point, Prendergast and Saxton (2013) warned how “relatively unskilled applied drama participants understandably may wish to explore and present their lived experiences in quite a nonfictional way” (p. 156). Indeed, the temptation to follow and encourage them into underdistanced territory is seductive, particularly when such brave efforts in this vein can be so engaging, inspirational, beautiful, politically or socially transformative, or potentially contribute to participants’ well-being. Regardless, we challenge applied theatre practitioners who declare that they are not therapists by “inclination” (Prentki & Preston, 2009, p. 12) to be extremely vigilant about their genuine intent and err on the overdistanced side of aesthetic distance. One simple way in which this can be implemented is inviting participants to share personal stories that are not charged with unmanageable emotions (too underdistancing), or ask them to select another group member to tell the story on their behalf (creating more distance).

While social-emotional intelligence has become the latest competency educators are urged to cultivate as we continue to serve many marginalized students whose voices have been unjustly silenced from untold instances of abuse and trauma — teachers should not attempt to lead a therapy process through drama/theatre methods, whether psychodramatic (i.e. autobiographical) or through underdistanced metaphors. Indeed, many therapists maintain outside supervision in order to gain perspective and protect their clients from their own unconscious motives that might inflict undue harm to clients, teachers do not. Finally, beyond the ethical and practical quandaries we’ve posed, there are now legal ramifications in many countries, for acting beyond one’s professional scope of practice.

As session leaders, we felt that our workshop provided ample evidence in favor of greater and longer dialogues between allied professions, and that the potential for collaboration and building each other’s knowledge base is tremendous. We felt honored to host a forum for building international connections across disciplines, particularly to endorse transformative drama/theatre practices that also maintain a safer experience for practitioners and participants alike. The comparison of our shared problems and perspectives further highlighted the importance of paying attention to leaders’ intentions and participants’ concurrent levels of emotional engagement, disclosure, and distance. As this dialogue continues and deepens, we predict a more expansive and richer understanding of each other’s perspectives, ultimately benefitting the constituents our professions serve.

In our session at the 2013 IDEA world congress and in this article, we have attempted to share some resources, basic concepts, and tips from our research and practice that we feel our colleagues in neighboring worlds should investigate further, and learn to more consciously use. The inherent dual realties found within all drama/theatre practices can organically provide both performers and witnesses a medium through which we may discover and develop appropriate intrapersonal and interpersonal boundaries. Consequentially, the boundary between therapy/therapeutic can be dense and mysterious, and the framework of aesthetic distance simply offers one of many ways to further this cross-disciplinary inquiry. Like McCaslin (1994), we do not endorse sociodrama as a substitute for therapy. Rather, we specifically advocate for using sociodrama and other practices that embrace qualities of aesthetic distance, wherein constituents can more safely play with the confluence of thought/feeling, me/not me, and public/private. We applaud any practitioner who is called to help participants harness this power, while simultaneously imploring the use of caution.   Journeys into these nebulous territories typically resist discrete and neat categories of education, art, activism, or therapy–especially when trying to find appropriate ways to share private material in public or semi-public settings.

To this end, Landy (1994) underlines the inherent complexity of utilizing the model of aesthetic distance:

…this formula does not, of course, apply to all cases. For some, the mask is underdistancing and the enactment of reality-based roles is overdistancing. (p. 117).

With practice and mentorship, extratheatrical facilitators will eventually become more attuned to the emotional needs of their groups, and intuitively conceptualize and guide aesthetically distanced activities and presentations that are neither too close nor too distant, simultaneously led by their constituents, “walking backward to the future” (Taylor, 2003, p. 61).

From what we could surmise, we were able to accomplish many of our goals within the relatively short segment of time with which we had to work. In our future publications and presentations, we look forward to sharing more detailed and varied guidelines for navigating these boundaries. As there are no hard-and-fast rules or universal formulas that can be applied to every context, at this point we can only urge practitioners to develop and refine a repertoire of facilitation that is informed by this kind of research rather than simply relying on the word therapeutic.


Bibliography

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For Further Reading

Barton, R. (1994). Therapy and actor training. Theatre Topics, 4(2), 105–118.

Burgoyne, S., Poulin, K., & Rearden, A. (1999). The impact of acting on student actors: Boundary blurring, growth, and emotional distress. Theatre Topics, 9(2), 157–179.

Clay, J. (1972). Self-use in actor training. The Drama Review: TDR, 16(1), 16–22.

Cohen-Cruz, J. & Schutzman, M. (Eds.) (1994). Playing Boal: Theatre, therapy, activism. London: Routledge.

Jones, P. (1996). Drama as therapy, theatre as living. London: Brunner Routledge.

Leigh, L. Dix, A. Gersch, I. Haythorne, D. (Eds.) (2012). Dramatherapy with children, young people and schools enabling creativity, sociability, communication and learning. London: Routledge.

Landy, R. J. and Montgomery, D. T. (2012). Theatre for change: Education, social action and therapy. London: Palgrave McMillan.

Lazarus J. (2012). Signs of change: New directions in theatre education. Bristol UK, Chicago, IL: Intellect

Seton, M. C. (2010). The ethics of embodiment: Actor training and habitual vulnerability. Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre and Performance, 1(1), 5–20. doi:10.1386/peet.1.1.5

Slade, P. (1955). Child drama. Michigan: Philosophical Library.

Slade, P. (1995). Child play: Its Importance for Human Development. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishing.


Biography of Andrew M. Gaines
Biography of Jason D. Butler
Biography of Clive Holmwood