The purpose of this study is to see the remedial effects of therapeutic
theatres on the audiences and the people involved the performance including
the director, actresses, and volunteering guides, by systematizing its
production and staging process. This study especially focuses on the actual
performance I participated, titled ≪A Duck and a Princess≫.
The objects of study were 20 drama therapists involved in the performance
including the director, actresses, and volunteering guides and its 899
audiences such as teenagers(in/out of the sheltering organization), migrant
women, single mothers, poor mother-and-child families, socially neglected
people like depressed women and others who are interested in arts therapy or
counseling therapy.
I analyzed its producing and staging process with 'a qualitative research
method,' using a narrative way that I, an actual participant, looked back on
all the procedures I've experienced in that performance in the light of the
drama therapy and tried to illuminate its practical meanings.
These are the results of the analysis:
First of all, I found that a therapeutic theatre has an exactly same format
with drama therapy which has three elements; theater experience(warm up
activity), watching-expressing(main activity), and encounter-sharing
(finishing activity). Both cases, audiences can participate in the performance
as active participants, not passive observers.
Second, the process of therapeutic theatres helps drama therapists to have
reinforced ability and growth. All drama therapists(the director, actresses,
and volunteering guides) who engaged in this performance learned how a
person's private story can be an universal story by fictionalizing it. Also direct
encountering with audiences strengthened their intuitive power, catholicity
and quickness.
Third, the audiences had chance to gain self-awareness and recovery.
Unlike other typical plays, through active involvement in the performance,
they examined their own experiences and had opportunities to determine to
try to make difference in their lives. We can call it healing process.
Fourth, this therapeutic theatre created a new performance pattern by
creatively harmonizing a typical play and a drama therapy work. Audiences
in this new performance pattern are main characters just like the director and
actresses. They also created their own dramatic reality and various meanings.
Therefore, the therapeutic theatre ≪A Duck and a Princess≫ had
significance in the respect that it sought to find out various practical methods
based on the traditional theater play and drama therapy theories. But here I
want to add some suggestions for its development.
First, we still need to study more about diverse stories and methods to gain
audiences' sympathy and active participation in the performance.
Second, we need to study flexible dramatic constructions that can apply
audiences' reaction into the performance immediately.