How is Dramatherapy related to Theatre?
The Dramatherapist can be seen as an empathic director who encourages clients to experience their physicality, to develop an ability to express the whole range of their emotions and to increase their insight and knowledge of themselves and others. The Dramatherapy session occurs in what the director, Peter Brook, calls the ‘Empty Space’. In the internal life of the client there are memories and dreams, fears from the past and apprehensions about the future and these can be embodied and realised in this ‘Empty Space’. Dramatherapists enable clients to release their own ‘inspirational creativity’ into roles they play, thus, both clients and Dramatherapist become what Augusto Boal calls ‘spect-actors’ – both actors and spectators. The Dramatherapist as empathic director helps the client or group member take responsibility for his/her own life through the use of aesthetic distance and theatrical metaphors.
