Drama therapy

Drama therapy, also known as the single word Dramatherapy outside the US, is the intentional use of theater techniques to facilitate personal growth and promote health. Drama therapy is an expressive therapy modality used in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, schools, mental health centers, prisons, and businesses. Drama therapy exists in many forms and can be applicable to individuals, couples, families, and various groups.

The use of dramatic process and theater as a therapuetic intervention began with Psychodrama. The field has expanded to allow many forms of theatrical interventions as therapy including role-play, theater games, group-dynamic games, mime, puppetry, and other improvisational techniques. Often, drama therapy is utilized to help a client:

Solve a problem
Achieve a catharsis
Delve into truths about self
Understand the meaning of personally resonate images
Explore and transcend unhealthy patterns of interaction
Drama therapy is extremely varied in its use, based on the practitioner, the setting and the client. From fully-fledged performances to empty chair role-play, the sessions may involve many variables including the use of a troupe of actors.

Drama in education

Unlike theatre in education, Drama in Education (DIE) is workshop-based, with groups creating their own scenarios, ideas and even subject matter through the use of drama and drama workshops. Sometimes this kind of work may lead to the creation of a play, or a piece of TIE or some other kind of means to show a result from the work. Drama in Education utilises skills used across the spectrum of dramatic activity, everything from teacher in role to normal theatrical conventions of audience and spectator. DIE is usually run in youth clubs, schools, community centres etc. DIE involves a high amount of participation by the group, and is therefore aimed for smaller groups of individuals.

Pantomime

These stories follow in the tradition of fables and folk tales, usually there is a lesson learned, and with some help from the audience the hero/heroine saves the day. This kind of play uses stock characters seen in masque and again commedia del arte, these characters include the villain (doctore), the clown/servant(Arlechino/Harlequin/buttons), the lovers etc. These plays usually have an emphasis on moral dilemmas, and good always triumphs over evil, this kind of play is also very entertaining making it a very effective way of reaching many people.

drama for education

There are many forms of educational drama these all share one common goal, to create awareness or an understanding of an idea or issue. The following is a few examples of the main forms in which drama is used as a tool for education.

Theatre in education (TIE) is the typical image of drama, seen since the 1960s. Usually performed for youth groups, or schools by a drama group this form of theatre was usually a devised piece which used abstract ideas to communicate a message, it follows in the tradition of plays seen throughout history such as morality plays like Everyman. This form of theatre could also be compared to commedia del arte, and other such travelling forms of theatre.

Drama

Drama (Classical Greek δράμα) is a literary form involving parts written for actors to perform. It is a Greek word meaning "action", drawn from the (Classical Greek δράω), "to do".

Dramas can be performed in various media: improvisation, live performance, radio, film and-or television - and nowadays web chat. "Closet dramas" are works written in the same form as plays (with dialogue, scenes, and "stage directions"), but meant to be read rather than staged; examples include the plays of Seneca, Manfred by Byron, and Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Other dramatic literature may not resemble plays at all, such as the Imaginary Conversations of Walter Savage Landor. Drama is also often combined with music and dance, such as in opera which is sung throughout, musicals which include spoken dialogue and songs, or plays that have musical accompaniment, such as the Japanese Noh drama.

Improvisational drama, a form of improvisational theatre, is drama that has no set script, in which the performers take their cues from one another and the situations (sometimes established in advance) in which their characters find themselves to create their own dialogue as they perform. Improvisational drama is made up on the spot using whatever space, costumes or props are available.

Drama is ana