Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/89837
Title: Creating the play space : human encounters explored through theater processes
Other Titles: Critical pedagogy for healing paths beyond “wellness,” toward a soul revival of teaching and learning
Authors: Gatt, Isabelle
Keywords: Critical pedagogy
Mental healing
Mental health
Social interaction
Theater
Performing arts
Issue Date: 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Citation: Gatt, I. (2021). Creating the play space : human encounters explored through theater processes. In T. Kress, C. Emdin & R. Lake (Eds.), Critical pedagogy for healing paths beyond “wellness,” toward a soul revival of teaching and learning (pp. 105-113). London: Bloomsbury.
Abstract: The memory of that evening in 1992 is still distinctly vivid in my mind. This was my first experience working with theater in a residential drug addiction treatment center. The experience opened up new understandings, fresh perspectives, and made me realize the potential of using theater and the arts as triggers and mediums for self expression, discovery, and growth. I had been invited to participate in this seminar led by Giorgio Testa in this rehab center in Naples by Loredana Perissinotto. Giorgio, a practicing psychologist and theater practitioner was a collaborator of Loredana, a lecturer who had been one of my most insightful theatre Studies lecturers at University. To this day, I consider her one of my gurus. She had extended the invitation to me and she was also at the seminar. The participants, thirteen in all, included two men in their final stage of rehab and various professional theater practitioners and drama educators. For one whole week, we lived together and worked intensely on Sophocles’ Philoctetes using a workbook designed by Giorgio. The workbook “activities” included coloring in pictures, reading excerpts of Philoctetes, and storytelling by Giorgio and participants that provided the links to the excerpts. The booklet included short writing tasks—answering questions in role, or a character’s thoughts, stimuli for discussion, and creating our own individual presentations leading up to a collective creation based on triggers from the tragedy. The seminar used process drama techniques to help the participants inhabit the Greek tragedy; they were techniques familiar to me as I used them in schools during drama lessons, as a drama teacher at the time, and for theater in education (TIE). I was familiar with these strategies (hot seating, thought tracking, freeze frames, teacher in role, etc.), and I knew how effective they were, but this text, the context, and the adult audience made this experience and the reflections different and all the more profound. For one thing, I had never really worked with anyone who had been substance dependent. I could, however, see how an experience such as this seminar was valid for the addict, but more so for the audience/other participants.
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/89837
ISBN: 9781350192676
Appears in Collections:Scholarly Works - FacEduAOCAE

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