Drama therapy and distancing: Reflections on theory and clinical application

Landy, Robert J.

doi:10.1016/s0197-4556(96)00052-4

Cited by 35 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The therapist chose techniques based on the distancing they perceived a client required. Landy (1997) highlights the responsibility of the dramatherapist in understanding how to use distancing as an intervention tool by manipulating it to inform the choice of techniques and to establish goals which will depend on how closely a client is able to work with their own material directly.…”

Section: Working Within a 'Safe' Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

Safety, play, enablement, and active involvement: Themes from a Grounded Theory study of practitioner and client experiences of change processes in Dramatherapy

Cassidy

Gumley

turnbull

2017

The Arts in Psychotherapy

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This study aims to investigate how dramatherapists and dramatherapy clients experience change in therapy and whether change processes identified are consistent across dramatherapeutic approaches. Method: Seven dramatherapists and seven dramatherapy clients were interviewed about their experiences of dramatherapy. Using a grounded theory method three core themes were constructed from the data. Results: The resulting core categories 1. working within a safe distance; 2. the client being allowed and allowing self to play and try out new ways of being and 3. being actively involved in therapy: creating something visible and having physical experiences using the body, capture the experience of change for both dramatherapists and clients in therapy. Key change mechanisms were also proposed, these included: developing new awareness and finding a language to communicate. Main conclusions: A focus on developing new awareness and increased insight into self are important outcomes for therapy and need to be clearly communicated as such. Future research should include further exploration of the key themes identified and the client developing increased reflective functioning as a key change mechanism during dramatherapy.

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Section: Working Within a 'Safe' Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

Safety, play, enablement, and active involvement: Themes from a Grounded Theory study of practitioner and client experiences of change processes in Dramatherapy

Cassidy

Gumley

turnbull

2017

The Arts in Psychotherapy

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“…Pendzik, Emunah, and Johnson (2016) describe theatrical performance in two categories: therapeutic and nontherapeutic. Therapeutic theater intentionally creates performances that can narrate and validate participants’ stories (Jones, 2007; Salas, 2005; Snow et al, 2017), reveal new insights and understandings about the performer or group to others (Landy, 1997; Pendzik, 1994; Snow et al, 2017), and reveal insights to the performers about themselves (Casson, 1997; Pendzik, 1994). Nontherapeutic performance may also deliver therapeutic benefits to performers and audience, but that is not the main intention.…”

Section: Performance-based Drama Therapymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Space to Speak: Therapeutic Theater to Address Gender-Based Violence

Arias

Dennis

Loo

et al. 2020

Violence Against Women

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This article examines the experience of eight graduate students in the drama therapy program at Lesley University when creating and performing a theater piece centered around gender-based violence. The performance piece, A Space to Speak, used the performers’ real-life stories to highlight their vastly different, yet strikingly similar, experiences and invited the audience to examine their own relationship to those stories. A description of the process used to create and perform the piece is followed by a discussion of the impact the process had on the performers and audience members.

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“…Thus, by applying Sartre to drama-based therapy, I suggest conceptualizing clients' change as a sequential dynamic movement between two modes of dramatic presence: from being-in-drama (non-reflective) to being-for-drama (reflective). Landy (1983Landy ( , 1996 has imported and expanded Scheff's (1981) model of distancing emotions, claiming that 'distancing is relevant to drama therapy in that the therapist bases much of his [sic] work in examining the dialectics of actor and observer, self and role, one role and another role' (Landy 1983: 175). Distancing as a psychotherapeutic concept and device is a spectrum between two poles.…”

Section: Dynamics Of Acting In Drama-based Therapymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Landy (1983), in the state of aesthetic distance 'the individual plays both roles of participant and observer simultaneously; or he is able to move fluidly from one role to another, as appropriate' (Landy 1983: 178, emphases added). The therapist's challenge is, therefore, to facilitate an aesthetic-dramatic distance, for it is only when clients are simultaneously participants and observers that unbearable pain can be borne and they can undergo a cathartic experience (Landy 1996).…”

Section: Dynamics Of Acting In Drama-based Therapymentioning

confidence: 99%

The experience of acting: A synthesis of concepts and a clinical vignette

Orkibi

2010

Journal of Applied Arts &Amp; Health

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This article illuminates the experience of acting through a synthesis of concepts from therapy, arts, and philosophy. Through the lens of performance theory, the author first addresses the difference between acting in the context of formal theatrical acting and acting in the context of drama-based psychotherapy. By applying Sartrean concepts the author characterizes the experience of witnessing in the case of tangible and permanent works of art versus witnessing in the case of embodied and ephemeral performing arts. A distinction between two contrasting modes of dramatic presence, being-in-drama and being-for-drama, is provided. Drawing on Moreno (1953), Landy (1983), Boal (1995), and Bolton (1984, the author argues that these two opposing modes of dramatic presence coexist simultaneously in the experience of aesthetic-dramatic distance, conceptualized here as being-via-drama. Finally, a clinical vignette is provided to illustrate the experience of acting in drama-based psychotherapy.What characterizes the experience of acting in theatre and in drama-based psychotherapies? This article answers this basic question through a synthesis of concepts from therapy, arts, and philosophy. It illuminates the experience of acting, first in a general context and then in the context of drama-based psychotherapy.

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Drama therapy and distancing: Reflections on theory and clinical application

Cited by 35 publications

References 3 publications

Safety, play, enablement, and active involvement: Themes from a Grounded Theory study of practitioner and client experiences of change processes in Dramatherapy

Safety, play, enablement, and active involvement: Themes from a Grounded Theory study of practitioner and client experiences of change processes in Dramatherapy

A Space to Speak: Therapeutic Theater to Address Gender-Based Violence

The experience of acting: A synthesis of concepts and a clinical vignette

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