Drama Therapy, Theatre for Young Audiences, and How They Can Help Youth Process Trauma
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Event Website
https://source2022.sched.com/
Start Date
19-5-2022
End Date
19-5-2022
Keywords
Drama Therapy, Theatre for Young Audiences, Arts in Education
Abstract
In the past couple decades art therapies have gained more attention and are able to provide an alternative treatment for mental health than traditional therapy practices. Some of these practices include art therapy, music therapy, and drama therapy. Drama therapy is defined by the North American Drama Therapy Association (2022) as “the intentional use of drama and/or theater processes to achieve therapeutic goals.” These intentional practices help the person seeking drama therapy achieve mentalization, which is the ability to separate yourself from the emotions of a particular event in order to better understand their emotions (Irwin and Dwyer-Hall, 2021). This ability to separate themselves from their emotions allows youth to practice empathy towards their own situation and helps them better understand and process the trauma associated with a particular event. In addition to drama therapy, Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) can also help youth practice empathy. Playwrights such as Suzan Zeder, Aurand Harris, and David Saar write TYA plays that explore more serious topics like divorce, death of a family member, and even death of a child. By using TYA, we can open up conversations about difficult topics or explain concepts such as drama therapy and mentalization to youth. This project combine the two concepts together I have written a TYA play, called The Drama Therapist, where the concepts of drama therapy and mentalization are explained through a narrative storyline. This presentation will cover the research that inspired and informed The Drama Therapist while including snippets from the play itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8QrtCUhK3A
College of Arts and Humanities Presentation Award Winner.
Recommended Citation
Cox, Kira, "Drama Therapy, Theatre for Young Audiences, and How They Can Help Youth Process Trauma" (2022). Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 6.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2022/CAH/6
Department/Program
Theatre Studies
Additional Mentoring Department
Theatre Studies
Drama Therapy, Theatre for Young Audiences, and How They Can Help Youth Process Trauma
In the past couple decades art therapies have gained more attention and are able to provide an alternative treatment for mental health than traditional therapy practices. Some of these practices include art therapy, music therapy, and drama therapy. Drama therapy is defined by the North American Drama Therapy Association (2022) as “the intentional use of drama and/or theater processes to achieve therapeutic goals.” These intentional practices help the person seeking drama therapy achieve mentalization, which is the ability to separate yourself from the emotions of a particular event in order to better understand their emotions (Irwin and Dwyer-Hall, 2021). This ability to separate themselves from their emotions allows youth to practice empathy towards their own situation and helps them better understand and process the trauma associated with a particular event. In addition to drama therapy, Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) can also help youth practice empathy. Playwrights such as Suzan Zeder, Aurand Harris, and David Saar write TYA plays that explore more serious topics like divorce, death of a family member, and even death of a child. By using TYA, we can open up conversations about difficult topics or explain concepts such as drama therapy and mentalization to youth. This project combine the two concepts together I have written a TYA play, called The Drama Therapist, where the concepts of drama therapy and mentalization are explained through a narrative storyline. This presentation will cover the research that inspired and informed The Drama Therapist while including snippets from the play itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8QrtCUhK3A
College of Arts and Humanities Presentation Award Winner.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2022/CAH/6
Faculty Mentor(s)
Emily Rollie