The Implicated Witness: Towards a Relational Aesthetic in Dramatherapy

Abstract

Dramatherapists often draw on biographical performance to facilitate individual and social change, often within the public sphere. This paper considers the cultural politics of biographical performance through the ideas of Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and the practices of Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Augusto Boal, Susan Bennett, and Julie Salverson amongst other applied theatre and dramatherapy practitioners. The author discusses the concept of witnessing and proposes a relational aesthetic in dramatherapy to explore how dramatherapists may create socially effective and affective performances that bring audiences into greater proximity to each other, to the issues staged, and to those performing.

The Body Politic: The relevance of an intersectional framework for therapeutic performance research in drama therapy

“…Our performance signaled this alliance to the audience while still presenting our own identities as emerging from a relational process rather than a collection of static, singular givens. Importantly, the work did not end with the final curtain of the performance but continued in the stories exchanged by audiences, thus continuing the process of reflection and inquiry (Denzin, 2003;Leavy, 2009;Sajnani, 2012b).…”

“…Towards this end, I have been interested in how a critical race feminist paradigm, and specifically ideas about intersectionality, contribute to an understanding of health as involving an awareness of how the body is a site of political struggle expressed (and too often treated) as individual pathology (Sajnani, 2010(Sajnani, , 2012a(Sajnani, , 2012bSajnani & Nadeau, 2006). This is of particular relevance to drama therapists as our work involves an investigation into the impulses, images, roles, relationships, repetitions, and stories that expand and constrain experience.…”

How can arts-based research in dramatic performance illuminate understanding of the therapeutic relationship?

“…Technique has the potential to offer familiarity and certitude, but when I let go of this I step into uncertainty. The client represents the unknown; it is an improvisation that is characterized by uncertainty (Sajnani 2012) and change itself (Johnson 2016). Yet when I let go of technique and what I think I should be doing as a drama therapist I attune more to the client and something in the dynamic comes to life.…”

The 6-Key Model and the Assessment of the Aesthetic Dimension in Dramatherapy

“…These ideas have also begun to resonate among dramatherapists. Nisha Sajnani (2012), for example, is calling for the application of relational aesthetics to dramatherapy practice. In her view, dramaturgical practices that include audience participation, such as Boal's Forum Theatre, Playback Theatre, and other forms of therapeutic and community-based theatre that challenge the conventional distinctions between performer/audience, client/therapist, encourage the development of a 'reflexive, collaborative, systemic, and interdependent account of lived experience' (8), which could become the basis of a relational aesthetics applied to dramatherapy.…”