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

Abstract

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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