I met a second time with the same group of Educators and Artists who I had interviewed for this study. My purpose was to give them another forum to restate and reflect on their views regarding the extent to which Dramatherapy fits into the Arts curriculum. The Forum included the two professional Artist/Educators: (Stephen) La Frenie and (Naomi) Tyrell, and the two Secondary School teachers: (Steve) Russell and (Terry) Slater. I was a participant and moderator of the forum.

In the first issue related to the topic, we focused on the challenges of teaching identified Special Needs Students. Two student case studies were used to illustrate the concerns of the Group. In the first case, the student who was off her medication

Was not allowed to get angry nor could she get really excited and run around. She literally couldn’t move; she was trapped. She was just trying to cope. How could she participate or learn anything? But, this student who had a multiple personality disorder performed some of the best Shakespeare he had seen. "She loved to do monologues from Macbeth and Hamlet. She did a crazy person auditioning to be Hamlet, she improvised monologues using a telephone as a prop to speak to different people on the line as different characters. Another student, after participating in a Drama exercise where he would have to read quickly while incorporating emotions, would respond with, "I have a form of dyslexia. When I try to read fast, I can’t focus on the words.

In the Group’s opinion, that was not dyslexia at all, which had been the diagnosis given by a therapist. "It was simply that when the student would get excited, he would not be able to read, which is a skill that most people cannot do without training. The student had been incorrectly labeled with a learning disorder. So, we need to look at children in a holistic manner, and not rely on drug therapy." The use of drugs as quick solutions was strongly criticized.

Role-playing would be a more powerful therapy for that kind of student. It gives the students freedom to go beyond what is constraining them. "For example, a teacher can say to the students, ‘Now you are in role; you are wearing the hat or the mask. Now you can do this. And you can come back. And nobody is going to make you take more drugs because you know that you are in role; it is ok’. Working in role, however, is taking a risk that a student may emotionally break down. The safety of "role" means that the student thinks that he always has to stay in that role.

Another group member said that he liked his students to break out of role, so he can control what happens. "You have to take the risk that a student may punch you or start screaming and break down and cry. But, students usually feel relieved afterwards. The students have a new memory of the "acting out" rather than identifying the anger or the excitement as the cause of the problem."

We discussed the topic of emotional distance in role-playing and concluded that students should be taught that they should use their personal experiences without "revealing everything" to an audience. What they reveal to the audience happens to the audience as a kind of catharsis. "It’s how the audience relates to that actor’s emotional experience and what it means to them personally too. The audience can achieve the emotional distance as well."

One member of the group related this to a unit in Mask work done with his students at the Central Board Office. He described the event when

A student went into the little child character mask and it became frightening because subtle suggestions were given for the student to ‘come out’ of the mask and she didn’t respond. She was very emotional, crying, sitting on the ground and doing all of this stuff. Even though he believed that the young girl needed to have that release, he made hints like, "You have to go now. I’m sorry that you have to leave." But she, as the child character, wasn’t picking up his hints and resisted. It was obvious that she needed to stay in role, and whatever that was that had to come out of her, had to come out. When the students ‘come out of the mask’, "they are shaking, red in the face, but beaming and radiant. It is a wonderful catharsis that they have gone through. It’s got to be therapeutic! I don’t know how else a kid would get that release or whatever that is?"

We agreed that Drama is therapeutic in and of itself and there is only a problem when you switch to doing Drama as Therapy and the students look for problems that may or may not exist:

In one case, a student who was doing rapid storytelling, described images of a horrific car accident where people were maimed. And she just broke and started crying. So, she was allowed to leave the classroom accompanied by another student. When she returned, she told her teacher that she didn’t know where it was coming from and that she had had a rough week. She had ten assignments that were due besides a mime course after school, and all the horrific images she had described weren’t true but were the result of her natural tension coming through. "There’s natural tension in our thought processes which can be perceived as deep-rooted problems. So, when you approach Drama as Therapy, the trap is that a student can look for a problem that doesn’t truly exist." The catharsis can be misinterpreted and it’s just a "release". That’s what the fault is with Drama as Therapy. As soon as you put a whole class in a certain framework, they all have to fit in. Students might start saying, "I have to dig out a problem in order to fit in to this class!"

We concluded that when students think in a violent way, like the girl who was describing the horrific accident, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are innately violent. "We have a concept that kids are violent when, in fact, their hormones are just going crazy and that’s how they deal with it (by thinking in violent images). Today, that’s what being thirteen or fourteen is all about and there are too many pressures. Society is hypocritical for putting adolescents in an environment where they aren’t allowed to express that and yet, wants them to. Kids aren’t being allowed to be kids anymore".

We discussed another experience dealing with a grade nine class of Drama students at the beginning of the year. "They were playing a particular game and having fun. They were touching one another and they had a role and they believed in it." The Group wondered how a teacher could keep them at that level? "Students will say that these games are stupid which makes a teacher doubt the simplicity of the chosen activity." We felt that the initial uncomfortable level must be overlooked. And, the teacher must accept these critical reactions as part of the students’ mind-set and unfamiliarity with ‘spontaneous expression’.

Regarding this discomfort, we agreed that students make up excuses, become professional hypochondriacs and get into the whole thing of ‘paralysis’ early on. "I can’t do that because I’m partially dyslexic", or "It’s going to hurt me". So, we concluded that teachers have to find the middle ground where they are providing students with the experience without defining it.

The Group noted this irony: As soon as a lot of Drama teachers hear the word, Therapy, they ‘freak out’ because they feel that they are not qualified. Alternately, as soon as you get Therapists, you have them inventing problems such as child abuse. "The simple reality is that kids don’t know how to play anymore. Where has ‘kick the can’ gone? It has to come back. People must start ‘unplugging the tubes’." So, we concluded that we should hide the Dramatherapy inside the curriculum. "Richard Pochinko did just that. Drama touches all that is in us. It’s a release, it’s cooperative, and it’s all about dealing with people."

Instead of doing games, one Group member said that "she does more structured work, with her masks. Dealing with imaginary objects, to have the focus and concentration to do any kind of mime is Therapy. It’s all Therapy. People have to get back into their bodies. They don’t use their imaginations enough. Drama is one of the saviors that helps bring kids through the hard times."

There is, as the Group sees it, a confusion that lies with the semantics of the word, Therapy. "As soon as you say Therapy, you think of Psychotherapy, and those pathological students who have problems or try to invent problems to fit in with the therapeutic framework." We concluded that "using the imagination, or giving students permission to touch each other and have human contact and play and have some freedom for a while is therapeutic. "You don’t have to think about the pathological reason for therapy; it’s just helpful for them and good for them to be ‘little kids’ and get a chance to play. Society has taken so much of that away from them." During the childhood of one group member, he used to,

Grab a stick and a ball and go out into the field to play baseball.

But, today, you get into a uniform and your parents have to drive you and there’s a paid, adult umpire. If I argued that I beat the ball to first base, I’d stand up and argue with the other kid and we’d resolve the conflict and it would affect our friendship and this would affect our conflict resolution and we would decide who won. Now we have "rent a grown-up" to stand and watch and he’ll decide for the kids and they don’t interact. This is ludicrous.

Drama can be liberating for young people, in our view. We see so much pressure on students today. "Teachers, kids, parents are all ‘too bogged down’. The only thing that a family can do to relax together is watch television. The kid says something and Mom says, ‘Shut up!’ because Mom (or Dad) is tired. So, let’s go back to Leave it to Beaver!"

We also feel that the family spends their time together in cyberspace rather than in the living room. "The TV time is not a ‘human time’. And there is not enough spiritual time either with rituals of belonging for everyone involved in the spiritual activity."

In this way, we blame television for providing the etiquette and the rules for behaviour in the classroom, the school, and the streets. "Kids are slapping each other’s hands like basketball players do on television."

An example of the influence of television on students is seen in the following anecdote:

Yesterday, when we finished doing our interviews, we had a new boy join the class from the United Arab Emirates. And, of course, one of the questions that the students asked this boy was, ‘What is your favorite TV show?’ Of course, it was all ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’, ‘Beverley Hills 90210’ and ‘Friends’. He made the most shocking statement which was, ‘I don’t like TV!’ It was as if he was a social outcast or too weird. And the class screamed out, ‘Why, why don’t you like TV?’ They thought that this was treasonous!

In summary, the Group had reached a consensus that the Therapeutic process is important to the curriculum in its benefits to students. I asked, "My question to you is what do you see as the implications for teaching, teacher training and the techniques for the classroom? Even though there is not a structured Dramatherapy course in schools, and some of you may even feel that is important for achieving the goals of the curriculum, what are the implications for teachers?"

We identified the contradiction that exists in this result-oriented movement. "Drama is not a scientific experiment. So, this more ‘outcome-oriented’ movement creates a "trap" whereby Drama as a technique to create specific results, overrides the open-ended Drama process. Drama is therefore, used as a technique for anger-management, time-management, and designed to achieve specifically – programmed results. This is the danger in the movement that can affect how teachers deliver curriculum and how they assess their students."

We believe that teachers would require very specialized, additional training to use Drama methodology to achieve such goals as conflict-management skills for students. "All teachers should be required to take Child Psychology at all Faculties of Education."

One group member did not remember having to take any Child Psychology courses when he was at the Faculty six years before. He only took the Psychology of Learning course and he regretted not having taken the other Psychology course that was offered. It would have been advantageous, "just being able to identify and see behaviour in a larger and more specific context."

We believe that teachers who provide this kind of Therapy do not necessarily go into the classroom with the intention of ‘doing Therapy’ but discover that they are being helpful upon reflection.

Sometimes a kid will need more therapy than we knew and will have an emotional outburst, or traumatic recollection and things will happen in the classroom. So, what is happening to that teacher who may be opening that door to that possibility? That teacher needs to be caring and show that he ‘would not abandon, humiliate or degrade the student who is having an emotional experience in front of a group’. Drama teachers need to be "human" or "in touch" with their students. And they have to be sensitive to them and aware of them in many ways, relating to them as human beings, not as science experiments, or as products of a business-framed education system. Or as labels.

The Group views this "factory-style paradigm" as a shortsighted movement:

We are not just producing factory-workers; we are educating the young people of our society. The emphasis is on employability eight hours a day. We are neglecting the rest. And if we frame the education system around employability exclusively, we are missing the boat! That’s the human interactive level that values and imagination play. In a way we are saboteurs, although we have to be because we have to say that we can provide the "employability" skills by playing games or working cooperatively, they are being prepared for a job. But you, as the teacher, also know that you are providing them with a whole lot of experiences that have nothing to do with that.

Some of these experiences include ways of spending time alone, or interacting with people more honestly. And these are skills can’t be "put down" because there isn’t a basis for saying that which is acceptable by the "over-specified world".

The Group believes that Drama Teachers, therefore, have to be generalists, or as previously described, "humanists who are prepared for ‘spin-offs’ and have the sensitivity and intelligence to recognize students who need further help and take them in that direction."

Drama will open that door. This is something that a Math teacher is not as likely to encounter in his classroom because he would probably view it as misbehavior. If a student vented in the Drama class and his next class was Math, the overall result would be that the Math teacher would notice that after the Drama class the kid pays attention and is very calm. But on Day l, when Math period comes before Drama, the same kid is off the wall, not concentrating, and the teacher will see a tangible result, if they are allowed to vent that way.

It was pointed out that a Drama class is not long enough for certain students with specific problems. This was revealed in the case of a young girl who started to act out and then continued on with this behaviour after class. "She couldn’t compartmentalize the behaviour into a 75 minute period. There is a lack of time within the limits of the 75-minute period for every child to come to closure emotionally."

Another implication from the Group perspective is the move towards generalization of non -specialist teachers who are brought into Drama Departments and given one section of Drama to teach in their timetable. But, they lack the experience, relying on textbook lesson plans (i.e. Booth/Lundy’s, Improvisation) to get by. Drama teaching as a whole, and a level of learning is affected. "There’s enough Drama in the class; there’s some role-play, they have fun and that’s it. It doesn’t go beyond being a structured class that would be taught in Math." It is the Group’s view that students should be taught by a Drama specialist at some point in their education.

Is it is a positive or negative thing to have untrained teachers of Drama teaching it? Is it ‘real’ Drama? And if it isn’t, then how will teacher training change so that teachers are better able to understand? Perhaps, the organization of the Faculty of Education needs to be restructured. But it’s a fortress. It will be a long time before there will be major changes in that area of the Education System. Maybe.

Drama teachers are being usurped by other subject areas and Drama Departments are beginning to shrink as separate subject disciplines, as the techniques are dispersed throughout the rest of the system. The methodology is being used elsewhere or perhaps the vision or the approach to education is being used elsewhere. There is strong potential for that happening. That is what happened with the integrated grade nine "Arts" courses. "Half the time, the students were with the visual art teacher and they were involved with perspective drawing and visual arts things which we try to relate to in Drama as their story, personality, whatever. This lessons the affect of the therapeutic benefit for the student since the art teacher may only see the "visual art" aspects of the drawing and may miss the content (e.g. the severed head in the corner or the use of the color, black). That’s not true integration then."

Therefore, he Group recognizes the need for Drama specialists. "Without their skills, adaptability and flexibility (depth of background and a big bag of tricks) a non-specialist teacher can’t possibly deal with the students as they are and where they are. A student may pour out some emotion in role but the teacher is more concerned that their upstage foot is forward. There is a need (in education) for teachers to get in touch with the people they are working with and not just the subject that they are working with." The Group acknowledges "the need to deal with them as young human beings and help them to process through their phantoms. It is absurd that we are not allowed to touch students and show how beneficial it is for them to be patted on the back, for example."

At the "C" School, the number of reports on the number of unwanted, improper ‘touchings’ by teachers has increased as noted by a Group member. "For example, a teacher went to break up a fight in the schoolyard and the placement of his hands on a student’s shoulder was considered improper. The parents of the student, didn’t investigate the incident on their own and automatically called lawyers." This Group member said that he does take the risk of touching his students because he cannot teach with fear that what he is doing will be misinterpreted. "There is a point, where a teacher says to himself, ‘Enough is enough!’ A situation may arise where the principal calls a teacher in and tells him that there is a report that he molested one of his students; then, he would have to deal with it. And probably his career is finished. That is the risk. But, he isn’t convicted of anything. All he has is the accusation."

The Group discussed the importance of positive touch in the classroom and the studies that prove this. For example, the deprivation of touch on newborns may have a profound effect on their development.

In the Drama classroom, there are opportunities such as trust exercises where you fall back on people, or in Alexander methods, or in the games structures, to set up these "touch" situations. We can make the kids hold hands with each other, which is astonishing for high school adolescents. But, there is a need to be careful. The students have control of the "on/off" switch: they control who touches them and when they are touched and in what way they are touched. Teachers have to be careful that they are not imposing touch on their students if it’s unwanted.

In one of the group member’s classes, a female, Muslim student, wearing a veil said that she couldn’t play a game and then when the class was playing it, she joined in. Her involvement was not questioned. It was her choice. And he claimed that he had not been otherwise advised by her parents. "No one could ever say that I forced her to do that." He stated that he always presents a disclaimer at the beginning of the activity, when he gives out the rules, which states, "If you have a problem with the activity, or if there is something physically wrong with you preventing you from participating, speak to me about it. You won’t have to participate." He thinks that we have lost common sense in so many ways and is irked by the fact that we are ruled by fear, noting the contradiction that we are trying to get these students not to be afraid themselves. "Students know their rights but they don’t know their responsibilities. ‘You can’t touch me. You can’t do this. I am dyslexic; I can’t do that.’ It’s like they have seen too many programs on Law and Order and they hear these rights but don’t allow themselves to get involved in the experience."

Pornography on the Internet was seen by the Group as one of the reasons for not bringing the ‘net’ into the school and giving students access to that information. "Who is the guilty party when the students find those sites on the Internet? It is the students’ responsibility to choose what they look at and we are responsible for teaching them the consequences of their choices, giving them the opportunity to reflect on the morality of those choices. Simple, right or wrong, what will happen if I do? Students tend to shift the blame away, not accepting their own responsibility. This, we agreed, is disempowering; Drama does the opposite."

The group consensus regarding the use of Therapeutic Drama techniques or forms was that the intent should not be Therapy. Instead, it was felt that the overall objective should be the development of desirable qualities and skills such as: self-esteem, self-confidence, cooperation, moral values, communication, understanding, commitment and so on. Developing these qualities, we explained, is very different than using Drama for problem -solving or conflict-management. This is an agenda that can be pre-determined by the Drama teacher.

What is the difference with that agenda and the agenda for Therapy? "In the therapeutic domain, the discovery is spontaneous and what is discovered can be dealt with afterwards. There is no manipulation. So the need is the process, not the result and the Drama teacher is not setting up "the" reaction; they are setting up "a" reaction.

As a writer of curriculum, one of the Group members has had to make choices about the themes to study or focus on, to allow a therapeutic experience to happen.

If I take conflict resolution as something that I feel my students need to deal with, then I give them opportunities to discover things about conflict resolution by structuring Drama work for them so that they can explore those topics, or themes. Perhaps, this is where we have to look at the Drama curriculum and examine what it is. Do we need to be more overt in our selections about content? Do we have to deal with, ‘how to get along with difficult people and conflict resolution, and the family and relationships’?

With reference to the Alternative school system, the Group learned that the underlying skill that the students learn at the "C" School, for example, was the skill to adapt to a situation, rather than a specific topic, like conflict- management.

There, the students develop skills in speaking, concentration, and movement to convey meaning, and each of these has a knowledge component as well. In Drama, there is the affective part (getting along with others, showing respect, the feeling of self-worth, building confidence and self-esteem). In the knowledge component of the Drama course, a theme like conflict-resolution can be introduced along with the terminology and theory for conflict resolution. You need both. The therapeutic perspective is 50%. It is always there.

It was acknowledged that this is an easier job for an artist/educator who doesn’t have to teach to the curriculum. "I know the curriculum but can adapt the lesson if necessary. If a student is angry that day, we will deal with anger or whatever comes out of the improvisation." He doesn’t prearrange dealing with anger because he knows that those students who aren’t ready to deal with anger, will tune out and won’t participate. He thinks that students may influence each other’s moods. And, for him, it is the technique of improvisation that he looks for and not the catharsis.

The general view of the difference between the guest artist and the regular classroom teacher is that teachers do have to shape the lesson and experience so that it leads to a specific outcome.

For example, a teacher could use the list of "the 10 C’s" for the students to refer to after their Drama work. In this way, the students are given a good, reflective technique and can connect their work to the expectations. That is why the structuring that a teacher does, by giving the students a list to choose from and structure their thinking processes, is so important. You aren’t just asking them random questions like ‘What do you think today?". This framework is given so that the students can start to see their power as people, the positive results or changes in their behaviour, or the value in their answers. It is not right or wrong; it is what they think they have learned.

It was felt that students do skip school but come to Drama class and they tell their teacher to mark them absent, or they come on their lunch hours because the Drama teacher is someone they can look up to. "Attendance in Drama classes, compared to other classes, is very high. The trust relationship goes beyond the work in the classroom."

Kids come out of their way to come to Drama class. They need it, they want it and it is something that they enjoy. And that is not because it is easy; it is often very challenging, stimulating and they find the risk-taking exciting. The fact is that they don’t always have to be right and feel successful.

And, it is believed, "there are a lot of students who come back to tell their teacher that they have had their lives altered by their experiences in that Drama class."

How does a teacher deal with objectivity in Arts education? We insisted that it is not possible to evaluate an emotional response objectively. So, we asked, "Would Drama one day be taught without a grade? Richard Courtney, for over 25 years, talked about that as an alternative to end the controversy in Arts evaluation. He suggested a form of self-evaluation, that teachers ask their students, at the beginning of a course, to write down what they wanted to earn by the end of the Drama course, and then, let be allowed to earn it." But the Group was aware that "in the public educational system, we have created the currency; marks are the currency. Parents say, ‘My daughter got a 73 and I thought that she would do better.’ Then they look at the other things. That is the unfortunate thing; we should be looking at more than the numerical placement of the student. Yet, it’s hard to get them out of the currency exchange way of thinking." Similarly, the teacher who values Dramatherapy in the educational context faces that very dilemma.

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This analysis includes the eight interviews and the Group Forum, and provides a synthesis of information relating to the thesis topic through illustrated details and direct quotations. The analysis initiated as a selection of the most significant themes derived from the individual narratives and developed into an integration and classification of those themes that recurred in multiple interviews.

Drama and Therapy are interrelated as well as being unique fields in their own right. The "doing" of Drama is Therapeutic. The process or practice of Dramatic activity, even in an educational context can be significantly helpful to the participants, providing long-term benefits. Clinical Dramatherapy, is related to Developmental and Educational Drama in practice only, not with theoretical intention. It is essentially, the product vs. process duality, which separates the two uses of Drama in each context. Does Drama produce an objectified result as in Dramatherapy or does it unintentionally benefit the participant through the process of active involvement? Needless to say, the effectiveness of specific Dramatic modes for the participant, observer, and instructor, can be clearly identified in this analysis.

The participants of the study included: (Ken) Dryden, (Julie) Hard, (Stephen) La Frenie, (Steve) Russell, (Terry) Slater, (Larry) Swartz, (Naomi) Tyrell, and (Bernie) Warren. Each of them was influenced at various periods in their careers by teachers, mentors, experts, friends, family, authors, and medical doctors, who helped to direct them on an exploratory path, and eventually led them to their current application and practice of Drama-in-Education.

According to Dryden, the general public and the government hold misperceptions of Drama which are: "It’s a nice skill to be able to learn how to act" or "Drama helps you with a skill and you may end up in the school play." It is perceived as unserious to the public, a frill, discretionary, a luxury. "And in times when you can’t afford luxuries, it’s one of those areas that get cut back." The most vivid example of Dramatherapy for Dryden was "watching people who had been sexually abused as children working on an Art project. The project was to create little sculptures that would be part of a much larger sculpture. They were working on their squares of a quilt and what they were supposed to do was to try and express what the experience (sexual abuse) had meant to them and what meaning there had been in their lives before that had happened and in the present. This helped him to understand and "buy" the therapeutic model of Drama."

Russell had a solution to the connotation that Drama is merely entertainment. "Drama educators would be much better off if the name, Drama, was dropped from the subject area because we are constantly fighting a perception by parents and therefore, by students, that Drama is Theatre, or Acting. And actor training as a route of some kind of vague notion of entertainment has a very low value in parent’s eyes. When it is perceived that way, then that is a problem. Drama courses should be referred to as interpersonal relationships courses or as job training and we would have enrolment coming out of our ears!"

Hard contributed the student perspective. "The grade nine students who are taking it, just so they can get their credits aren’t going to benefit from it. They are just going to class to play. The Drama class can begin to become a game without any learning happening." She believes that ‘play’ is beneficial. "You get a lot out of play. It’s an emotional release; but it is nice to think that there is something more intellectual behind that which will interest your mind to expand and grow. And that’s where the important process part comes in."

La Frenie doesn’t think that a lot of therapists are legitimate and feels that there is an oversell of therapy in our society. To him, therapists abuse their authority "by taking control away from a person only to hand it back as the solution. Therapy has become simply whatever a particular therapist’s personal opinion or philosophy is. It’s not based on any scientific study or on any real factual evidence. It is a risky business."

Swartz thinks that others respect his teaching methods of Drama. "He has touched a lot of people that way through his workshops in Drama" so he thinks that "they recognize why he does what he does and the potential for what they can do." Dramatherapy, on the other hand, is a practice that he finds ‘alien’.

Slater sees that his methods are perceived often sympathetically and encouragingly by his peers. There has been some indifference and at the very worst he had experienced a few along the way, who were very suspicious of the whole process." Throughout the narratives, those public, student, parental, and institutional perceptions of Drama-in-Education, and about Therapy, in general, were not unpredictable revelations.

For example, La Frenie’s experiences from a childhood, in which he spent a lot of his time alone, feeling like a ‘geek’, have given him the empathy to identify with ‘shy kids’. His self-knowledge developed early on from the empowerment by his mother. And his experience in the Arts has also contributed to his self-awareness. It is, ultimately, his strong sense of self that has enabled him to teach students therapeutically. Because he knows "who he is", he can relate to his students and begin from "where they are".

Drama is indispensable to the education of a young person in Slater’s opinion. He believes that like any exploration of the Arts, "it inevitably must offer a reflection in the mirror for the student because of the demand that the subject makes to look inwardly. The teaching situation, in order for it to be successful on both sides, requires a clear and full use of self and the more a teacher can do that, the more the students will do that as well."

The double mirror metaphor again emerged from Tyrell’s description of her son’s school challenges. From this experience," she learned how to teach, to impart information and then eventually really became concerned about children. I guess that was because my own child was experiencing difficulty. He was one of the problem children; one of the kids who could drive you crazy in the classroom." She became curious "why those kinds of students behaved like that in the classroom and how one could help them through Drama." She always received feedback from teachers after her work with their students, that those who had trouble in English or Math or social situations at school, were ‘incredible’ in Drama." This is evidence that Naomi’s own personal story is reflected in her Drama work.

Tyrell had been taught that "finding your own clown leads to the discovery of one’s true self." But, to her disappointment, "she has not been able to find her own clown. Even though she can make fun of herself in her masks, and finds it easy playing the wise, old woman, or the manipulative and charming little child, she has difficulty playing ‘herself’." That may have been why she chose to wear a mask to begin her interview with me.

Warren introduced the Taoist notion of the "double balance" in teaching/learning in which the practitioner/teacher balances his own energies as he engages the patient/student in a dance towards wellness. For him, "It is more than a double balance; it’s a double balance in context. It is, likewise, practitioner-specific in context."

The "mirror" metaphor and the mutually-reflective process for teacher and learner emerged quite consistently from the narratives

According to the participants of the Group Forum, "there is a confusion that lies with the semantics of the word, Therapy. Saying the word, Therapy, associates it immediately with Psychotherapy, and Pathology (students who have problems or try to invent problems to fit in with the therapeutic framework)." In the Group’s view, "just using the imagination, or giving students permission to touch each other, have human contact, and play at the same time having some freedom for awhile, is therapeutic. Society has taken so much of that away from them. Drama gives the students a kind of liberation."

Hard experienced therapy in the relaxation exercises done in class. These were never labeled as therapeutic so she didn’t identify them that way. "I always felt good coming out of the classroom, and after a high energy exercise like throwing a ball around, my day’s pace changed and I had a ‘pick me up’."

Even though La Frenie had studied Drama as Therapy with Gary Pogrow, an acting teacher in Vancouver, and was familiar with Carl Jung’s work, he was critical of Therapy in terms of "the methods in practice and the false sense of dependence on the therapist that is produced." Drama reveals your own feelings and forces you to deal with them. The myth is that there must be somebody there to say, ‘Yes. You have solved your problem.’ He feels that there does not have to be a formal confirmation. "You can accomplish the same thing by doing Theatre without having to spend all that money." Therefore, To La Frenie, Drama/Theatre is therapeutic in itself.

Students can look for problems, which may or may not exist but instead come out of ‘normal tension’. There’s natural tension in our thought processes that can be perceived as deep-rooted problems. For example, one of his students who had been doing rapid storytelling, described in detail, to the class, images of a horrific car accident. And she broke down, started crying and left the classroom accompanied by another student. When she returned, she told the teacher that she didn’t know where it was coming from and that she had gone through a rough week at school. She had ten assignments that were due besides the mime course after school. And all the horrific images weren’t true but were the result of natural tension coming through.

To Dryden doing Art is helpful because "it allows students to get out lots of experiences, feelings, and lots of understandings by separating the problem (e.g. abuse) and themselves. They talk about their problem. If they had been asked directly about it, they wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it and couldn’t have talked about it." He believes that he has been a witness of how that can work in Drama.

Warren conceded that talking about Drama as a therapeutic medium is reasonable. He warned that,

People use terms extremely sloppily. The notion of Dramatherapy with capital D’s and T’s in it, as if it were Insulin Therapy is what I am opposed to. So, if you are going to talk about self-esteem or body image, you had better define what you mean by each, because they are such "basket terms". And if you are going to talk about Dramatherapy or Drama as Therapy or talk about it in a clinical sense, you better be careful about what symptoms you mean to alleviate and how you plan to do it and how you are going to prove this happened. Most of the research that has been done about this has been simply appalling.

4. The participants in this study have supported their personal semantic preferences with regard to the usage of terms for Dramatherapy. The choice depends on the user’s agenda and becomes, therefore, "user-specific". The main purpose of this dissertation, however, does not include this particular dispute in semantics. There is an apparent value in the unintended purpose of Drama.

Dryden had discovered a third purpose of Drama, after he had been a part of the Drama classes at T.L Kennedy Secondary School. "This purpose has to do with social and personal values and could be just as valuable as the first two (entertainment, and self-expression). Whether it is an intended or unintended purpose, (and in many ways, it’s an unintended purpose), it’s a useful one. "

Hard had been unintentionally exposed to Dramatherapy in a number of ways in all of the roles (as learner, observer, teacher) and had observed other people’s exposure as well. She had been a participant and observer when she was involved in Drama activities and in workshops with guest artists. She had acted as instructor with the Grade Eleven classes and working with the cast of the play, Departures and Arrivals (Shields, 1991).

Tyrell had never intentionally attempted to do Dramatherapy in her Drama work with physically handicapped children; yet," this work had presented her with some of her best memories." She was mainly trying to give the participants some Dramatic experience which they had not had before.

Dramatherapy can be an unplanned experience for a Drama student. The subversive, and unintentional benefits of Dramatic activity cannot be predicted. And it appears that the benefit of spontaneous, organic activity can only be realized upon reflection.

The Group Forum participants were intensely concerned about the issue of the increase in student problems in the Ontario School System. The very first concern pointed to the challenges teaching those identified Special Needs Students who encounter certain side effects from prescribed medications. "The student who was off medication was not allowed to get angry nor could she get really excited and run around. She literally couldn’t move; she was trapped. How could she participate or learn anything?" Another concern regarding the misdiagnosis of student learning or behavioural disorders was that "students are labeled wrongly with a learning disorder so that we need to look at a child in a holistic manner, and not rely on drug therapy. Role-playing is a powerful Therapy for that kind of student."

In his book, In School (1995, p.196), Dryden wrote, "Drama class is made for today’s kid…it is informal, unself-conscious, verbal, familiar, active, profane, and authentic." He supports the current relevance of his statement with the view that students have not changed much since the publication of his book, nor have schools changed " in the larger questions around the kid" very much.

According to the participants, problems that students bring into the classroom show how tough their lives are and the whole idea of dealing with their emotions and reality is equally tough for them. In Russell’s opinion students need Drama because they don’t have any other group. "They are largely ignored by their parents, they fall together into random peer groups. And, in an organized institutional way, students are becoming more and more isolated. They sit, cocooning all the time." So, Drama offers a different kind of experience and one that is an essential part of human development. In Russell’s practice as a Drama educator, more and more his role is to diagnose a class, or to say, "These kids have this problem or if only they would do this, we wouldn’t have difficulties and we could progress."

You are also fighting against the ever-shortening attention span that the media is helping to produce in students. They lose interest because they are not accustomed to holding their interest on a particular topic or focus for very long. In Drama-in-Education, there is a process of distracting the students and stepping outside the theme or issue. This ‘teacher trickery’ is used to help or enrich the process of learning for the students.

For example, Russell will introduce the Laban movement theory, for a few days and then return to the previous theme or topic to see if that theory is applicable.

Another difficulty in the High school setting is the "beat the clock" dilemma. "You know you have seventy-five minutes exactly for a lesson. We must move the students quickly to a level of profound meaning and then have time enough left for them to reflect orally and then, write about their reflections (with limited writing skills)."

The basic level student chooses Drama even as a general level optional subject, which is "very telling about the positive effect for the Basic Level Students. They are certainly getting something that they wanted more of in that program." As a result, Russell said that "his school offers a Basic Level course so that they can stream the students, and work with Basic Level students in groups and try to meet their needs directly."

Tyrell empathizes with those children "out there these days with lots of problems ranging from ADD or ADHD to abuse, suffering from neglect and low self-esteem." She believes that the teachers and parents are having so much trouble controlling these challenging children that they resort to giving them drugs.

So many children are now on Ritalin. And the teachers are so stressed out as some of them have up to eight needy children in one classroom. I don’t know how they cope. There is something that they are not getting. They are not getting the spiritual connection from their parents. The parents are so busy and nobody is sitting and talking to them and we all know this; all the educators know this. We have mega problems.

She thought that what seems to have happened is since parents have become so busy and stressed out, schools and teachers have become the parents.

How can kids function? Families are breaking up, dying and they go to school; they’re just "not there. Teachers have so many problem kids; it’s de-streamed; it’s crazy. I think people should go into the classrooms and see what teachers really have to deal with. Some classes are called, classes from hell and it’s really true.

In Tyrell’s opinion, anyone who "bitches" about education should go in and spend a week in the classroom and see what some teachers have to deal with.

Yet, Tyrell is aware of the contrasting picture: the pockets of good schools that seem very well-balanced. "I am sure that they have their problems too but I really thank God when I go into those schools and it kind of confirms that there is still a lot of good stuff and balanced people in this world." I agreed with her that we have to work in both milieus. We can’t just work in the trouble spots.

Tyrell’s initiation to Drama as Therapy began when she went to Bloorview Children’s Hospital to work with severely physically handicapped children (cerebral palsy, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis etc.):

The kids came in all misshapen and no communication skills. They were wheeled in with their Bliss Boards; one kid had sunglasses on." She and her partner had never dealt with people like this before in their lives and were really shocked by this sight. "And then an hour and a half later, when all of the children had their whitefaces on, they were smiling and laughing and making sounds and talking to us on their Bliss Boards; it was such a rewarding experience; it was incredible.

From then on, Tyrell has always enjoyed working with Special People. "I’ve worked with deaf people and when you work mime with deaf people, you realize what a novice you are because these people are so natural." Those experiences, she believes, have encouraged her to use sign language in all her teaching with adults and children. "It’s so closely related to mime and it’s such a beautiful language and it makes a kid think on a whole other level. It makes them empathize with people who are different from themselves and not as fortunate and it reminds them not to make fun of other people."

6. Drama is a therapeutic medium for the development of social and personal values. And, the development of these values is an add-on benefit of Drama-in-Education, according to Dryden.

The subject matter that is brought up in any Drama class may lead to interesting discussions that relate to issues in a student’s life. Those issues are useful to have as a focus of discussion because they may be the things that people find the easiest to talk about in order to fulfill the other goals of the course. The goals that are reached may include making a commitment to a larger group and expressing themselves fully. That kind of thing may well happen at least initially, if you talk about smoking in the school as opposed to talking about the comedies of Shakespeare.

It is very easy to see the effects of taking a Drama course on one’s social life from Hard’s standpoint. "For example, quiet students who are in class and never say anything to anyone change as soon as the lights are down and the stage lights come up. They can transform into a completely different person." In a social sense, then, she sees people "coming out of their shells and doing things that they normally would never do. To witness a social transformation is an exciting, refreshingly new way to look at another who is less expressive."

La Frenie discovered that there is "a deep sense of moral value and pride in taking responsibility for all your actions and coping with problems that may arise. This leads to effective problem solving instead of blaming." He also recognized that students are not as obsessed with sex and violence as everyone thinks. "You ask kids normally to walk in, sit down, and come up with a scene; then, it will usually deal with some sort of sexual or violent nature." He reported that he hasn’t found anything like that when he has asked them to get up and talk as fast as they can. He has, however, "heard the occasional sexual fantasy but most of them are very colorful, wonderful fantasies that don’t contain either sex or violence. You can play a very violent piece of music and the worst response that you will get is that they were afraid." In contrast to the opinions of the other participants, he does not advocate teaching theatre as social skill building as, he believes it can damage the theatrical experience. "You are not socializing teenagers by teaching them role-playing in the classroom. That doesn’t work for students and it hasn’t worked for him as a teacher. If you taught theatre strictly as theatre, everything would follow suit; they would naturally become more confident and sensitive."

In a Drama class where the students explore a social issue through a role-playing structure, Russell believes that they learn "something beyond the superficial media input that they are so accustomed to. What messages are we giving kids? Social interactions are typically violent forms, like football is for boys; girls do something else. Their values are to defeat the other team at all cost, take out another person or, perhaps, be cheerleaders. It’s either in that context or ‘on smoking hill’, talking about CD’s, dope smoking and sex."

What emerged from the above discussions is that the Dramatic medium is therapeutic in the way it helps students move beyond their familiar and media-influenced view of life. It allows them to see more than "sex, drugs, rap ‘n roll".

The negative impact of computer technology to Hard is, "the distance between people imposed by computers and information technology has removed us from our physical expression." Similarly for Tyrell, "the lure of technological advancement is creating a subtle atrophy of the human body, mind and spirit. It is the role of the artist/educator to find ways to inspire the imaginations of young people and to keep them in touch with their creative selves. Students are not having real experiences with the infusion of television and its one and two-dimensional content." She believes that "it is ever more important that students take Drama where things can start to redevelop and re-grow. Their imaginations are dying."

Bringing the Internet into the schools, and giving students the access to pornography is a critical issue, shared by the opinions of the Group Forum participants. "Students are always shifting the blame away and never accepting their own responsibility. We disempower them while Drama does the opposite." Drama as the antithesis of technology, notwithstanding its relationship to certain forms of the media (e.g. Media Arts is included in the Arts curriculum), empowers students to make moral decisions, to nurture their imaginations, and allows them to express themselves in physical and verbal forms.

8. The subjects of this study were asked to provide their own definitions of Dramatherapy.

Dryden, in agreement with some of the other interviewees did not try to give ‘a’ definition because he believes that in an educational context, there isn’t just one definition. "You don’t go in with a problem and have it solved through Drama in the classroom, but it does happen sometimes." Hard possesses a sub-textual understanding of the term, "Therapy" as reflected in her narrative. She illustrated that even playwrights, in order to express themselves, experience a form of therapy. "Writing about the human condition perhaps to them is Therapy." She attempted to define Dramatherapy as "the working out of inner conflicts through the use of Drama, which includes movement, thinking, concentration, focus, and imagination." The key phrase for her is "working out".

For La Frenie, the mere doing of Art is the Therapy. "All you have to do is look at a Frida Kahlo painting. Tell me, ‘is that not Therapy?’ And, that came naturally to her." Slater has learned that "everyone is capable of transformation, which, he believes is the ultimate goal." He doesn’t have a pre-conceived concept or personal agenda for Drama as Therapy except that he is certain that "it makes students recognize that there is so much more to be aware of about themselves. And, he sees in the work of Heathcote, Bolton, Dobson, and Neelands, that, "even without their reference to the term, Therapy, it contains the very level of engagement and commitment that can only work if there is direct personal growth." For, Slater, this implies Therapy. His own definition of Therapy is that,

It is the movement from unawareness to awareness: Awareness of one’ self, and the world. [It is] the awareness of one’s connections and the act of learning and the act of giving and receiving. All of those elements combine to create freedom. It is, in essence, the achievement of freedom through engagement. "I was looking at some kids playing a game and realized that in that moment they were all truly experiencing something which might be described as extreme pleasure, joy, fun; they were totally involved in what they were doing. They were free.

As Swartz defines it, Therapy is more about the recognition of personal behaviours and those of others. "Dramatherapy is about changing behaviours and attitudes towards emotions. So, the word "change" is there. Drama recognizes that and Therapy should recognize that." So, in his mind, the two meld. Because, Dramatherapy is about change in behaviour and attitude, he said that "Drama would have to be more long-term and consistent to achieve that."

Tyrell purposely doesn’t use the language of Therapy in her work. She has tried to make the problem solving for her students into a creative experience. And, from that aspect, she quite loves what she does because she doesn’t really "sit there and chew over the problems, or regenerate them. Instead, she makes them magic." She defined Dramatherapy in her own metaphorical way. "You see what the problem is and then you do something theatrical and magical with it and you make it a jewel and you blow it into the universe and hopefully it won’t sit on your back anymore." She also feels that if children are learning and having fun, a teacher has ‘got it made’! "You go into classes and see kids who are having trouble for various reasons and you just try and help them; you don’t put them down." The closest that she has come to the practice of Dramatherapy is through her mask work and teaching Integrated activities.

I determined from the collected definitions of the participants in this study, that to define Dramatherapy within an educational context is esoteric, sub-textual, personal and dependent on the specific context.

In Dryden’s example, "the experience of being involved in the school play for a new student from Bosnia, represented something to that student that helped her to integrate, and helped others see her as more than ‘a blurting answering machine’ that she was in other classes." As another social opportunity, Drama is seen by Dryden as one more way to encourage the very important aspect of familiarity to happen and a useful one in that way. "In Drama, kids get to know kids, kids and teachers get to know each other. They talk and listen, and because talking and listening is part of the course’s curriculum, there is time for both." That kind of familiarity will happen for the better students in the class as a by-product of their keen motivation to learn. But achieving this familiarity is important for all students.

For Hard, who had assisted with School productions when she was my student at T.L. Kennedy Secondary School, the knowledge and skills she gained from these experiences was apparent in her tasks of presentations for students that were new to the University campus during their orientation week. In her opinion, ‘putting on a show’ for the first year students "showed them that they were cared about, and at the same time, introduced them to the executive. For her, it was a low-risk, entertaining way of creating a familiarity and building a relationship." Familiarity, then, can develop as an outcome of performance.

Russell confided that he had experienced personal growth and had gained confidence throughout High school and University as a result of his "Theatre" experiences that included winning public speaking competitions. "And I became the student council president in my senior year because of the notoriety and the ability to deliver a campaign speech." It was his own experiences, which influenced his philosophy regarding the value of extra-curricular Drama/Theatre in School for personal growth. Tyrell finds that "she can go into a classroom and get through to a bunch of teenagers with a giant attitude because she has treated them as equals to her. They respect me as a teacher but I try and have a playful attitude and so they see that I am not trying to be above them; I have a similar sense of humor to them; in a way, I never grew up; there’s a side of me that’s still a kid and a teenager."

Tyrell had witnessed some amazing teachers who found the "balance" and had put the students back on track. "You have to be an exemplary teacher. You have to be a psychologist, a psychiatrist; you have to be everything." And they need a parent; or they need an adult to go to", as La Frenie has concluded. "And if you are always their buddy, you are no longer an adult." His assertion is that this line has to be drawn. And he is aware of the implications. "Traditionally, teachers were role models. Now, teachers are so overloaded with responsibilities and restricted in the way that they can talk to students, that they can’t act as an effective role model."

Russell referred to this theme as he described the grade eleven Date Rape Unit that he developed and taught. He said that he couldn’t take credit for actually saving his young female student from being raped, but he knew that the Drama work must have had an impact on her decision to ‘break up’ with her boyfriend.

I would like to think that raising her consciousness was a part of that. She certainly didn’t seem conscious of his inappropriate act at the time that I witnessed it. Yes, we are looking at social issues, using Drama to raise awareness and that’s one of the most rewarding things about my work. There are times when I can take a group and because of the Drama context, I can raise their awareness of issues and hopefully address their own attitude. So, it pleases me most when I can see an attitude change. It’s more a matter of making them aware of where their attitudes come from and what those attitudes are and if they choose to change, as they grow, that’s very good.

Similarly, in his OAC class’ Homophobia Drama Structure, his objective was for the students to humanize the homosexual that they were so easily ‘putting down’. The group had been previously unaware of their derogatory words and behaviour. "I can tell you that the next time that one of the less sensitive male students used the word, ‘fag’ in our class, it was not tolerated by the group." So, there was a very clear change in their attitudes because of that Drama Structure. Whether the male students who had severe homophobic attitudes causing the Drama Structure had changed their homophobic attitudes entirely, he did not think he would ever know, "but they certainly weren’t allowed to express it in our classroom any longer."

Throughout the narratives, aspects of socialization as a therapeutic manifestation of Dramatic activity was a theme that arose consistently.

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11. The following are case studies provided by the narrators. In each case, the narrators have explained that there was active evidence of the therapeutic process of Drama.

Hard had been exposed to therapeutic Drama in a number of ways and had observed other people’s exposure as well. In one exercise,

She had a neutral mask on and stayed off to the side. She was waiting on an imaginary dock, frozen in a tableau with five other people. She was watching a group of five other people in a tableau who were watching the intensity build as they were standing at the edge of an imaginary dock, held beck by some sort of rope, string, or "force". At the end of the dock, there was someone leaving and they had to say goodbye to that person for some reason. For Hard, the impressive part was how different people would bring that energy in and let it out. She was concentrating within her own group’s tableau while witnessing the other exercises going on that could be considered therapeutic.

She found that exercise therapeutic because "she was able to concentrate better and as result, has become more ‘tuned-in’ to the listener in conversations and knows when she is being listened to. "It’s a body language thing."

In another case, somebody had telephoned Hard.

This person was crying and almost hysterical because she had seen her ex-boyfriend with another girl. She told her to calm down, focus, try deep breathing, and other methods that she learned from Drama class. She counseled the person to relax, and bring everything into perspective, to concentrate on what’s really important, and focus on their own feelings. "Let it out and cry away and I am here listening to you and when you are calmed down, maybe we’ll take a step back and look at what you have done.

Julie had learned the same thing from Drama: "That if you think that you have failed, you can always take two steps back and ask yourself, ‘How can I make this better for the next performance’?"

In one comedy routine, that La Frenie performed, he described how he stopped existing for everyone after he had became a shop steward for his optical union, finding, "I didn’t exist anymore for some people and I remember saying off the top of my head, "Well, yes, sorry. I do exist. I exist for the one brief moment it takes for the manager to tell me to take the grievances and shove them up my ass and tell the Labour Board he said so," The point to the story for him was that he didn’t need other people to tell him that he existed. This same advice, given by his teacher, Gary Pogrow, "really hit home for him and has shaped his life ever since." He needed to find some form of existence for himself and that was a very important and therapeutic discovery.

In another exercise that he did with the men in the prison, he had them take an emotion of their choice and express it through a simple movement sequence. "You start on the floor and proceed to rise to stand and return again to the floor. You could choose your own way to do this." Later, they performed this exercise for the other prisoners in the program. One particular prisoner, refused to wear the red, clown nose in the exercise and was always complaining that the prison officials were ‘playing with his head’. "He finally admitted that he had a drinking problem in the movement sequence. It was out in the open. It is the self-revelation and your self-awareness that is Therapy."

As a workshop leader, at Thistletown, a Regional Centre for emotionally disturbed teenagers, La Frenie conducted a series of ten workshops. "Some of the clients came from abusive environments while other suffered from hallucinations and were heavily medicated." What he wanted to bring to Thistletown teens was "the sense that mime operated on a deeper, physical level and their bodies would remember the activities despite their condition or mediated state. Mime works by examining something and breaking it down into isolated movements." However, he found that the Thistletown group had to have things broken down even more than he had expected. "The teens he taught there remembered things that he didn’t or wouldn’t have thought they had noticed. For example, a Chinese girl in the class said that "she had learned how to close mime. At the end of each workshop, he would clap his hands and say, ‘That’s your workshop for today.’ He realized that to her, this gesture meant, ‘Mime class is over’."

At Nelson Boylen Secondary School, La Frenie taught people who were mentally challenged and others in the multi-handicapped program.

Students had physical handicaps as well as learning disabilities. He did mime exercises with them that brought them to life. One young man in his workshop could hardly speak and was slow. After a couple of mime sessions, he performed one of the funniest improvisations he had ever seen. "He started making a pizza. His eye for detail was remarkable and he didn’t stop at just making a pizza. This guy just kept on going and going until I stopped him."

IALAC (I am a lovable and capable human being) is a therapeutic activity that Russell had used quite successfully as a technique of developing self-worth in the grade nine Integrated Arts course at his school in Brampton. He told me about

the case of a specific, young male student, who was very thin to the point of looking very weak and frail. The other students called him a computer geek and he always got into conflicts the other boys who bullied him. They would hide his bag so that he couldn’t find it to go to his next class. They would torment and tease him because he would throw a tantrum. The most revealing thing in this case was on the second day of the IALAC activity, when students arrived in the class, the young man came running in, straight to the teacher’s desk and asked if they were going to wear those IALACS again. He had used it constantly. Every time the bullies were after him, he would rip it off and he would call it to Russell’s attention so that he would help him deal with that situation.

Therefore, Russell found that Therapy happened for that student. "It gave him a non-aggressive way of asserting and defending himself, because aggression doesn’t work when you are a fifty-eight pound kid. It gave him a new social vocabulary that he previously had not possessed." Russell also believes that "it’s healthy for students to have this vehicle to get that needed discussion about feelings and killer statements and hurting each other’s sense of self-worth. To become conscious of your self-esteem is a crucial step in development and it’s taken in that program and the students remember it."

Slater’s example was about two girls physically fighting in his class. He brought them into his office to discuss what had been happening and told them to describe the event in their own words. They had to engage one another and silence was not an acceptable resolution. They were asked to logically figure out the consequences of their actions as if their teacher had not intervened. In the end, they apologized to one another. It was his attempt for them to understand the language of responsibility.

For Slater, this is what Therapy tries to achieve. Tyrell related the case of her student "who was an incredibly gifted actor and stand-up comedian but had a block in expressing his anger." She said that she had encouraged him when he was trying to be angry in a performance and said,

"C’mon Ted. I don’t believe you, give it to me!" So, he broke through, got really angry and started yelling and screaming, which is what she had wanted him to do. He angrily left the class, because he just couldn’t handle it. He had never dealt with his anger and he came back the next day really upset about the whole thing. She had wanted him to "let the lid off" and deal with it so that he could grow as an Artist. So, she asked all of the students in Ted’s class, including Ted, to do dream work. It worked for Ted. He had quite an amazing dream about his parents and his relationship with them. Tyrell talked about it with him. It had been a profound experience for him. He was finally able to deal with his anger.

La Frenie applied his clown and movement techniques in his workshops for male prisoners in Guelph, Ontario. "During this exercise, the prisoners talked about why they were there and how they felt about it. They did this both as a clown routine wearing a red nose and as a movement piece." Hard played icebreakers such as an improvisation game, ‘Ten Seconds to Be’, which she believes helps people talk to others and get to know them. "It creates a common bond. Everybody is acting silly, being performers in their own way and expressing him or herself in order to get to know everybody else." She credited a High school unit in Greek Theatre, using mask to put on a different persona as her inspiration to take Greek studies at University. "Being able to put on a face, applies to the business world. You put on a face that says, ‘I am serious now and I mean business’ and people know it." However, she sees shortcoming to using the ‘face’ because "it can bottle up anger, and you hide behind it, waiting to explode." Another mode that is therapeutic, in her view, is relaxation through guided imagery that she learned to do in Drama class. "Through neutral mask work she has been able to concentrate more and focus on what people say when they talk to her."

La Frenie studied Theatre for two years with Gary Pogrow in Vancouver and "was getting Therapy at the same time". Pogrow brought in a lot of aspects of Gestalt therapy and La Frenie found the exercises frightening.

The workshops had two purposes then. You could use the exercise for personal therapy in order to learn about yourself and why you do what you do or you could approach them as legitimate acting exercises and use them for character study. It was always the student’s choice and some of the acting students constantly went back and forth between the two. This was mainly because they were such strong influential exercises that could "bring out" emotions. Gary made this duality of purpose very clear and he always warned the students when an exercise had more of a therapeutic application than a theatrical one. "In his classes, you could always stop an exercise before you finished if you felt things were getting out of hand."

In one example of such an exercise students were asked to lie down on the floor, close their eyes, and start to fantasize about anything. La Frenie’s fantasy was doing mime in a coffeehouse being watched by a mysterious presence. There was no audience, just a "presence". He volunteered to go first and told the class his coffeehouse fantasy. Once he finished, Pogrow asked the other students to group one at a time and re-enact Stephen’s fantasy. He did not participate; rather, he was a spectator watching his fantasy come to life in a certain way. He remembered that he became very frightened watching his fantasy unfold. He didn’t know why he stopped the exercise or why it was so frightening for him. But he did know that he chose to stop and not talk about it.

One of the techniques that La Frenie has used is the Rapid Storytelling mode, in which he "asks the students to talk as fast as they can. In this mode, talking aloud is the objective and no one else is required to role – play the other parts."

If you talk as fast as you can and sometimes even as loud as you can, things come out of nowhere; they just start appearing. What one expresses through the rapid storytelling are images. That is how most of us think and dream. We sense things. Therefore, as it comes out of your subconscious, it comes out in ways that don’t always make sense. The challenge of the technique is to remember what you said and start associating the images, which changes them. From a theatrical point of view, your body has a memory and it remembers things on a sub-conscious level. Your body reacts instinctually.

La Frenie has worked with students who have been heavily medicated and yet, to the surprise of the caregivers, in this activity, they have been able to remember physical activities from week to week. Learning Mime techniques helps to develop memory skills. For La Frenie, the therapy comes from the expression of sub-conscious memory. "Getting someone to act out and to move and then to talk about moving, generates the sub-conscious body memory and allows for the access of images that he didn’t know was there."

Similarly, Slater felt that storytelling was therapeutic in the sense that "either as teller or listener, you were working for a connection. The act of having to arrange data, emotional and informational, into an understandable sequence requires all the aspects of creation: chaos, order, and symmetry."

The Advice Line/Decision Tunnel, is a mode of Drama that works as Therapy, from Russell’s experience.

We were doing a Drama Structure from a literary source in which a teenage girl has to decide whether to have sex with her boyfriend who has been expressing his desire for sexual relations. He has gone to the bedroom waiting for her and she is forced with the dilemma of whether or not she should go into the bedroom. So, the entire class lines up in two straight lines facing each other, forming a hall way and a student in role as the character must walk slowly down that hall way and as she passes that person, they give her advice.

He has also used that mode with all of the characters from that Dramatic source forming the tunnel. "As she walks through the tunnel, each person has his moment to advise her. She hears all the voices in her head and we hear all the different possible thoughts that may be there (which, of course, are all the reflections of our own attitudes and morals). The person gets to the end of the hallway, or through the tunnel, and opens the door and walks in, or walks away. That action ends the Drama mode."

Slater became aware of the power of Drama as a therapeutic medium even before he became a teacher. He realizes now, that "Therapy comes from simply doing Drama because you are providing lessons for living throughout the Drama course in a most immediate way." He considered a Grade Twelve Theatre for Living Unit, as an example.

In this unit, the students acted a role in a short play (about racism, sexual differences, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, etc.) and then the student actors speak personally about the experience of having performed a play. These are two very different things. Many of the students talked about how being in the play had changed their opinions. Having had the experience of doing the play and exploring the emotions surrounding it, allowed them to see both sides of the question. Having this experience of how we deal with others was a positive learning and therefore, a very therapeutic experience.

He considers the ‘feedback’ mode just as therapeutic. Even if a session wasn’t that long Slater still would have his students sit down where they were and talk. "I listen and learn from them myself".

Swartz employs the method of ‘hot seating’ because it is a Drama Structure but he didn’t see it in a therapeutic context. "It’s usually in an in-role, improvisational context." For him, the best modes for therapeutic results would be observation, role-playing and hot-seating techniques. "When he puts a participant in the other’s shows and examines behaviors and talks abut it (which is a form of hot-seating), so one person is one the line or in the seat and in the group with a number of participants, observing and talking about that behavior, it is not done to change that person. In Drama the intent is different."

Tyrell understands clown and mask work in Drama to be Therapy but she said that her teacher, Richard Pochinko never called it that. She has taught blindfold masks to children. "I teach that technique but actually I don’t have to teach it; it teaches itself. It’s a mask from intuition; it’s totally non-judgmental." When her students do their names as masks in the clay medium she said, "The effect that this activity can have on an individual can be really profound."

I had a dream about my name mask. The eyes were incredible and it was like the eyes were mine viewing the world. And then it became the reverse where people were staring at me with these huge eyes. Some of the kids loved their masks and some of them hated them. It can be a challenge to get kids to play through the things they love about themselves and the things they hate about themselves.

Her friend teaches clown at a certain High school every year. He starts the students out and moves through their blocks. The teacher concludes that it sets a standard for his students for the whole year. "If they don’t go through the process, their work is on one level. If they go through the process, they are just sailing for the whole year."

Tyrell’s energy work and experiences she has had doing the ‘who breath’ (a breathing technique taught to her by Leah Shadesell) have been quite revealing. To her, it was "like doing Yoga and Therapy at the same time. The class would dance in a workshop situation for hours. Listening to Gospel, African and spiritual music, they would work their spines until their bodies were fluid and prepared them for the ‘who breath’ process.

Warren has used techniques that are also used by Psychologists, Psychotherapists, and Dramatherapists but doubts "if any of them can lay claim to these techniques. For example, the "empty chair" attributed to Moreno was first used by Stanislavski; the "guided imagery" used very effectively with Cancer patients by Simonton and others has been used for thousands of years by Taoists in training their priests, or martial artists." It is his belief that therapeutic techniques are the same as Drama structures but "they are context driven."

The Group Forum examined the therapeutic aspects of a workshop in Character Masks that had been done with elementary students at the Board office. "A student went into the character mask of a young child and she would not come out of the mask on her own nor respond to suggestions to do so. She was very emotional, crying, sitting on the ground and doing all of this stuff. She needed to stay behind the mask and release whatever had to come out of her."

One member of the Group had observed that, "when students come out of the mask, they are shaking, red in the face, yet beaming and radiant. It’s a wonderful catharsis that they have gone through. It’s got to be therapeutic! How else a kid would get that release?"

Techniques, therefore, used in both clinical and educational contexts have been found to be synonymous in definition and in their processes of implementation.

13. Conflict resolution work in Drama is an aspect of skill development in problem solving.

This has been something that Russell "especially had been focusing on more and more with his Drama classes." He described how his reading of books on assertiveness training and the influence of Neeland’s "who is served by an action?" had impacted his realization that facilitating those kinds of activities helps to give students a deeper understanding of human relationships and interaction. "He had explored status relationships (from Johnstone’s Impro, (1981) and had done this kind of work in his Second City training) and had learned to understand status maneuvers and their place in conflict resolution. I understand when someone is lowering their status or condescending to me, and acting out of an elevated sense of their own status to mine." These are phrases that he has added to his vocabulary of human interaction.

Any of the improvisational work that he has done that deals with situations where the students are relating their own personal experience and bringing that into the classroom in a safe situation, is a rehearsal for life. It is extremely therapeutic for them. Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre exercises involve the student actors both intellectually and emotionally.

He thinks that, "dealing with the fabric of the teenage experience, in a supportive group session is quite similar to (one of) the goals of Therapy, which is, catharsis."

Tyrell works on Integrated Arts and conflict resolution projects, highlighting anger management, empathy and acts of kindness. In these projects "children are enabled to make good decisions in dangerous or morally compromising situations."

Overall, the topic of conflict resolution, viewed by the narrators, possesses therapeutic value and enough significance for inclusion in the Drama curricula.

Russell thinks that reflective writing assisted his students both individually and as a group. "Sharing reflective writing and different perceptions of similar situations is often very helpful for the group." The quality of the writing of their reflections is always impressive in his assessment. To further support this view, Slater believes that "their own words themselves speak of the power of the Dramatic process to change their perceptions, their attitudes and their behaviour."

Other aspects of the shared vocabulary by clinical and educational Drama will be highlighted throughout this analysis and will particularly refer to reflection in the Dramatic process.

La Frenie, qualifies that this is true in certain areas.

Young people are not as messed up as we think they are. They are, however, neglected by their parents, and they need a role model and a listener; not necessarily a father or mother figure but simply someone older who they can respect as an elder." Teaching is a profession; it is an entity in itself. Just because someone is a professional actor, doesn’t mean that they can teach theatre. Someone could be a wonderful teacher and not necessarily a great performer. It is one thing to understand the process, and another to actually cope with being in front of people.

A good teacher, according to Slater, "is constantly examining what he is doing and trying to make it work better rather than simply relying on what is tried and true, but is always gearing it toward the students he is working with. To teach implies also a certain vigilance and dedication in everyday life. That is why in the past, this practice was limited to the very few. There are no good pupils, only good teachers."

Hard thinks that "professors at University could give their classes more of the human touch, so their students would be able to learn more effectively. Her interest would be cultivated and her imagination sparked. She would feel more comfortable asking for an explanation of material studied. Professors could examine their pedagogical methods adopting a different and fresh perspective that says, ‘Drama is therapeutic and almost guarantees or draws the students’ interests more. It would definitely be worth observing or maybe even adopting a few new philosophies that aren’t my own’."

Swartz thinks he is a different (and better) teacher than he was because "he has learned to challenge himself to reflect more rather than just do and talk about what learning is happening." It is really important, for Tyrell, "to teach without judgment and remain open to everybody and let him or her know that everybody has a path in life to walk some being more difficult than others."

The therapeutic teacher needs to be caring and show that she would not "abandon, humiliate, or degrade the student who is having an emotional experience in front of a group. " The therapeutic teacher, in the Group consensus needs to be human and in touch with her students. She has to be sensitive to them and aware of them in many ways and relate to them as human beings, not as science experiments, as labels, or as products of a business-framed education system. Drama teachers have to be generalists, or humanists who are prepared for ‘spin-offs’ and have the sensitivity and intelligence to recognize students who need further help and take them in that direction.

Being a therapeutic teacher is being a practitioner of holistic pedagogy: a person who is non-judgmental, reflective, self-examining, in-touch, open and sensitive. A Human being.

This is the Developmental Drama adage first coined by Brian Way, which Dryden supports in the following:

As the teacher, you have something to teach to. You are not just teaching Drama. You are teaching a person. We must not underestimate the fact that teaching and learning are very personal enterprises. And the best teaching and the best learning come from when you engage the person (the teacher engaging the student and the student engaging the teacher). That only happens when you have a sense of that person, when you know something about that person. Drama is an instrument whereby you can get to know a kid."

Slater thought that the industrialized concept of, "I have something to teach you, was an outmoded concept in the present day." He thought that the idea that the student is the subject of the course naturally changes the relationship between the teacher and the student. "This idea is demanding of the student because he is being asked to move closer and try to understand where he is at in relation to what you are trying to teach."

Tyrell believes that she would not have come as far as she has in her career if she didn’t have a child who had experienced major problems in school. "So, she now can sympathize with kids, their teachers and their parents. Teaching with empathy is part of the therapeutic process."

Through Slater’s extensive experience teaching ESL students in the High school, he makes a connection between Drama and Therapy.

Drama provided immediacy and a context by which the student learns the necessity of language. An important aspect of language acquisition is subtlety and nuance. Drama provided that opportunity especially for students who are attempting to integrate into society and want acceptance. It allowed them to make mistakes and connect in an authentic way. This was therapeutic because it could only enhance the student’s sense of self-esteem and control over his or her own life.

In another situation, a female Muslim student, wearing a veil, who said that she couldn’t play a game, then when the class was playing it, made her choice and joined in. He had not been advised otherwise by her parents. "No one could say that I forced her to do that."

La Frenie’s teaching methods are adaptable in culturally diverse contexts. He has found that in Canada, he works with students who have been ‘Canadianized’. "They have come to accept, for example, that eye contact is not impolite, but rather the opposite. To him, it just takes longer teaching new Canadian students from different cultural backgrounds."

Hard has felt like a Therapist at times because she was responsible for the students in her university residence building. "They would come to me when they would have their problems and I would listen to a lot of things that I couldn’t possibly relate to or couldn’t imagine relating to. But, it was my job to imagine what they were going through which is how I would use it."

La Frenie identified the essential qualities that he felt a Drama teacher should have. "He must match the energy of the student or exceed it, making the student get caught in his excitement. To give inspiration to somebody else is to give the confidence and joy that what his is doing is good. And it is not rubber -stamping. A teacher has to have the confidence within to let the student do and go; the teacher has to accept what the student does and put it into a framework that is there. And in the High school, this is much more restrictive than it is for me as an Artist." Slater sees his role and function as a Drama teacher as,

An initiator of students to be curious, and to care. He works to give them the conditions by which they are free to explore, experiment and experience. In turn, he reacts to that with respect and a great deal of concern for their fragility. He is aware that limits have to be respected. "It is the unspoken aspect of Drama, often the understanding of the intuitive that forms how we work in Drama." Slater’s best classes come from just trusting his intuition and the whole organic process of taking all the multitude of factors as a classroom teacher into account to ask himself questions such as: Is this valuable to continue? Should I stop taking into account a student’s boredom?

It is, therefore, those unique and intuitive aspects including trust, active listening, inspiration and respect, which contribute to the therapeutic profile of the Drama teacher.

La Frenie was concerned with the contradictory expectations in our school systems and in therapies.

You have to be subservient to a philosophy, to a corporation, to a boss, your parents, teachers, and the school administration. We say that we want students to have confidence but as soon as the students break out and begin to show independence and start to challenge things then it is quickly squashed. Sort of have self-confidence. Be something and we’ll tell you it is good and then go out and get a job.

The Group Forum formulated the opinion that education is becoming too specific in an area that deals with the general development of human beings. "Technology is instant; human beings aren’t. What is being done to prepare students for the ability to adapt and create because they are going to have more than one career in their lifetimes? The fifties mentality where a person had one job for life, no longer exists." We can see the contradiction of the ‘Corporate machine’ that is looking for creative people without any endorsement for creative teaching. In fact, the opposite is happening in the current educational machine, where the Arts are being devalued and deleted from the curriculum.

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20. The second opinion that emerged was that Dramatherapy should be included in curriculum planning. The consensus regarding its inclusion was this stipulation: the agenda should not be Therapy.

For example, we felt that using Drama modes for the development of the desirable qualities of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-awareness, communication through verbal or non-verbal means, a sense of morality, understanding, or commitment, etc. is very different than using these modes for reasons of problem-solving or conflict management. It is all based on the decision of the Drama teacher. So, the need is the process, not the product and the Drama teacher sets up the reaction; he is not setting up ‘a’ reaction. "It is the teacher who makes choices about which themes or topics allow a therapeutic experience to happen. But, there is a need to develop both the cognitive and the affective areas. And, the therapeutic aspect of both is fifty per cent. It is always there. We decided that,

It is easier for the artist/educator to achieve this in a more limited contribution to curriculum planning. He knows the curriculum and designs the units of study to enhance the curriculum; he does not have to teach to the curriculum. Teachers, on the other hand, have to shape the lesson and experience so that it leads to a specific result.

Hard firmly believes that students need the process of Drama as "it offers them the opportunity to work at a higher thinking level; if they don’t want to participate in the process, they choose to stay at the same level."

For La Frenie there is a double benefit to learning theatre as a profession. He appreciates that there is a transfer of learning from Drama to other subject areas. "In Theatre, you have the confidence-building techniques that you need for presentation skills in other subjects. Theatre brings out the ability to do math, for example." In his opinion, Drama in the High schools is "presently watered down to a point where it is not challenging anymore." That is why he felt that High school Drama programs worked only when they had a teacher who could inspire that higher level of achievement in students.

Drama gives the students the self-confidence to be able to go into Math class and heighten their learning skills. Drama allows them to go into Science class and make conceptual leaps and bounds that they need to make there. Einstein was incredibly creative because he looked at a series of figures and conceived the possibilities but he first had to conceive it. That’s creativity. It’s the conception and the expression of that conception. That’s what Science needs; that’s what Business needs.

One of Tyrell’s projects deals with special needs children and involves her favorite form of theatrical expression, the mask. She described the project in the following:

They feel a new presence in the room as I sing and problem solve and use sign language to communicate with four very different types of characters…" She then leads them through a range of character voices and body movements before presenting them with a series of characters to explore in pairs. They are invited to share the new persona with a group; the performer’s voice is disguised and inhibitions tend to melt away. Being in front of their peers seems to be non-threatening behind the safety of a mask. This process serves as a great self-esteem booster and the student is ready to delve whole-heartedly into the world of mask. There are a number of benefits in mask work for the teacher, student, as well as the artist.

In another project with "gifted" children, she used the combined media of words, movement, sound effects, and free verse poetry. "Because these kids are typically channeled, and wear blinders, they need Drama, especially to find out that they have bodies, and imaginations."

The word, Therapy, To Swartz’ knowledge, had not been used in any Ministry document even though he knew that "there was some mention about the self and personal growth in the Common Curriculum (1992)."

Dramatherapy belonged in the Drama curriculum according to the members of the Group Forum; however, we felt that its placement would have to be a subversive act, and a hidden element in the curriculum. But, Drama teachers would know it was there. "Drama touches all that is in us. It’s a release; it’s cooperative; it’s about dealing with people; it is one of the saviours bringing kids through the hard times."

To Slater’s knowledge, the current Ministry Guidelines for the Arts and the related Board Directives (Peel Board of Education) had included a small degree of the language of therapy. But, he felt that the language was clearer in the sections on student evaluation.

The Group Forum’s opinion regarding evaluation in the Arts (Drama) was that teachers can’t objectively evaluate a student’s emotional response. We wondered if assessment in Drama would return to its earlier status as a pass/fail subject. I recalled when Professor Richard Courtney (OlSE/UT) in his graduate school lectures espoused the benefits of a more self-evaluative approach. He suggested teachers asking their students, at the onset of a course, what grade they wanted and expected to earn and accordingly, let them work to earn it. This is a purist form of self-evaluation which works best in a Dramatherapy context in education. How a student’s self-esteem is affected by evaluative structures must be a consideration. "There isn’t really a need for formal evaluation of Drama work", was La Frenie’s, opinion. "That is a choice." He explained that the unique nature of the alternative school creates specific teaching and evaluation situations. "In an alternative school, a teacher will translate the mark given to the students by the guest artist, and make appropriate adjustments."

We felt that educators should be looking at more than the numerical placements of the students. "In both the alternative and the public systems, where the evaluation currency is marks, the parents get a report card and zero right in on the mark. Then they look at other types of evaluation, such as anecdotes. But, it is difficult to get the public out of that the currency exchange way of thinking."

It can be ascertained from the above excerpts that the topic of evaluation is such a controversial one yet it must be considered as a major implication of this analytical study.

Hard’s own sense of aesthetic appreciation had grown as a result of studying Drama. She has developed into a person who appreciates things more than she would normally. "I never thought about how much work and effort goes into a performance. You take it for granted and it teaches you to appreciate more the artistic value of something or the Dramatic effect of something. Even driving down the highway, seeing a billboard; I appreciate that more."

To Swartz, Drama promotes healthy thinking processes and encourages students to ask questions about the thoughts of others. "It helps them see that other people have different thoughts than they do and that their thoughts can be respected and received. Drama provides an opportunity to use language as an Art form to reflect on, and to examine and communicate real thoughts and feelings."

There are both explicitly and implicitly significant therapeutic benefits of Dramatic activity, which promote language and thinking skills for students at various levels and challenges. Details of this have been provided in the Literature Review and further explanations presented in the following chapter.

Within the process of Drama, students make more friends, and become closer, according to Hard. "Everybody is supportive of each other making it more like a family than anything. That family atmosphere provides a comfortable and light-hearted social framework." Hard believes that it is nice to have a trusting environment in which ‘emotional work-outs’ could occur. "It’s a good feeling to have mutual trust."

Slater considers Drama as "a safe environment for taking risks which aren’t always provided in life. In a world where knowledge is doubling something phenomenally, how can one hope to provide absolutes? The only way is to create an environment, which is safe and good, truthful and fun. We are at a point where Drama is needed to socialize and to reintroduce people to the idea of community, which is sadly lacking in our world."

Slater’s students asked him to participate in the improvisation Olympics in class. They had some difficulty with creating and sustaining conflict and allowing it to work in their scenes. He proceeded to be very serious and that opened a floodgate of tremendous work from grade nine students. It came from creating an environment of trust where the student is valued and the work is valued and where people feel ultimately safe. Those are the conditions for growth and any good classroom should provide that and the teacher must work to create that environment. He sees Drama as a metaphor for life itself and therefore sees the job of a Drama teacher as exposing the student to life and the questions that life will ask of them.

La Frenie felt students needed Drama because they need a class where they are de-structured enough to express whatever they want to express. "They can teach and show as opposed to being taught. Drama, which is humanistic, is never taught from the perspective that the teacher knows more than the student."

In summary, the safe quality of the Drama classroom depends on the teacher’s ability to interpret and establish the degree and measure of trust and risk-taking, which allows for deeper levels of learning.

In Dryden’s view,

Those (Drama) courses, which are often under pressure to justify themselves in terms of their course content, have as their greatest value, not the course content but the atmosphere that they offer. That open, expressive atmosphere allows a lot of other things to happen. "It is an extraordinary sight. Drama class: sixteen kids of all colours, their shoes off, in a ragged circle on the floor, some sitting cross-legged, others lying on their stomachs, heads propped on their hands, almost touching, touching…the class going on."

That is what differentiates Drama even from other practical, experientially based Arts subjects. Learning can happen in a setting without desks in rows. Vive la difference!

According to Dryden, transformation occurs in Drama classes mostly over the long term and sometimes over the short term. An example of Dryden’s observation deals with a specific student’s transformation in her Drama class during the semester. She had been one of the students he shadowed for the research of his book.

She had been constantly mocked by students in her other classes for being such a keener and had an uneasy relationship with them. In the Drama class, it worked. It started to work differently. And her experience of being involved in the school play, just represented something to her in a number of different ways that helped integrate her, helped her to fit in and she was seen by others as more than a "blurting answering machine" that she was in other classes.

To Dryden, the apparent value in terms of the course curriculum has to do with the student becoming better at self-expression." Students’ life stories exist in every classroom but in the Drama class they get expressed." Hard, similarly feels that Drama teaches individuals to speak in front of people more effectively. "Students are made aware of their body language, how it is sometimes interpreted and that it can be used to their advantage or disadvantage, depending on what meaning they are trying to get across to their audience." In the same regard for Swartz, the physical activity of Drama helps young people work with their physical growth. "As far as their needs, they need to listen, they need to talk, they need to feel, to reflect, to collaborate, to cooperate, to imagine. Drama extends their world of play and helps them look at situations from role play and from imagined experiences thereby learning through play." In concurrence with Cecily O’Neill, Swartz suggests that "if we can get children and young adults to listen to each other, then Drama benefits. Drama allows them to feel comfortable communicating with each other and at the same time learning something about themselves. But, you don’t know for sure that they have learned because it’s such a long–term process." Tyrell thinks that it is amazing what Drama can do for children because she has seen it first-hand. "If you cut off Drama and theatre to the world, it would be like if you open the door and you don’t hear the birds singing anymore. That’s what a great loss it would be. It is such a part of our lives."

I understand that there is a definite need for Drama-in-Education for the purpose of personal and social communication. This point was supported by the Narrators without argument.

Dryden found the ritual of Passing the Cane (or the Talking Stick) a really useful and interesting exercise.

That ritual of Drama is an occasion to get people talking and when they open their mouths, they start to reveal themselves. The way in which they express themselves, even the tone of their voice can give the listener (the teacher), a fairly good sense of how her students are feeling that day. And the students are talking about a topic whose content may also reveal something about them and how they live, what their priorities are and what their goals may be. "It is a revealing experience and what is revealed is tough, it is emotional in some way. And it might be poignant, triumphant; it maybe lots of things. But, it is personal; it is revealing and it is real."

Hard had been taught the skill of pushing herself beyond normal limits as a method of getting into a character. She said that she had used this skill both at school and in relating to people in her job. "In one character building exercise, she was challenged to achieve an intense state of anger that she had trouble reaching by herself. Intellectually, she understood that the character was upset and wanted to stand up for herself, but releasing this anger was her challenge. Her own easy-going personality would not allow her to lose the control that this particular character needed to."

La Frenie’s story about an exercise in which he felt "like something was being ripped out of my body and something deep inside was surfacing," supports the above point regarding self-revelation.

He broke down and started crying and yelling, "Stop! Stop!" His teacher told him again that he could stop the exercise at anytime. He was given time to compose himself. He didn’t remember why he stopped the exercise or why it was so frightening for him. It might have been based on his need for approval that he had at the time or some other revelation (that he could not remember) that was surfacing. Some of the other students told him that they appreciated his willingness to stop because they too were there to study acting and were feeling pressured to reveal things they did not wish to. Since he had not wanted to talk about it further, his teacher let the matter drop and proceeded with the next person. He never felt obligated to go further and had already tuned in to the fact that he could always do it as Therapy for himself, as a self-analysis.

La Frenie believes quite strongly that there is a misconception or mythology in the Theatre, that "you have to reveal everything about yourself and that you are naked in front of the audience." In his opinion, some actors enforce and justify this myth with a perverse desire to emotionally expose themselves in public. To La Frenie, Therapy comes naturally through the theatrical process in which, "you can reveal very specific things that are too difficult to reveal through your normal daily experiences and that alone is Therapy."

A certain prisoner in a workshop he led at a medium security facility in Guelph was always fighting. This was how his clown was revealing himself. Denial and anger kept coming as he talked about why he was in prison. He was an angry clown. He finally did the movement exercise and it was very simple, direct, and self-revealing. He started by sitting on the floor. He had his head bowed and was very tense. He kept looking to the left at a very specific spot. There was a definite struggle going on and finally he couldn’t stay where he was, and he got up and went over to the left side and poured himself an imaginary drink and then sat back down. What he said in a short, twenty-second movement sequence was more than he could get out in words. ‘It was out in the open. It is not the public confession that is Therapy; it is only self-revelation and the associated self-awareness that is therapy’.

La Frenie does not believe in hypnosis for the purpose of self-revelation.

Hypnosis is a very frightening thing we shouldn’t participate in. You are turning your sub-conscious over to somebody who you don’t know. This is very dangerous. Physical memories, which come out through Dramatic improvisation, place the control with you. If you reveal something while you are in control, it works therapeutically. To reveal something through hypnosis and be confronted with it is frightening because you are trusting that it really happened and that the person didn’t implant the idea in you however innocently. You are not in control and must keep relying on the Therapist. Therapy happens when you are in control.

Regarding the therapeutic benefit of self-revelation, Swartz finds Drama to be an exciting medium. "It allows him to inspire children’s creativity and gives them opportunities to reveal their thinking and feeling. That is why he ‘does Drama’."

Tyrell’s capacity to really reach "problem kids" in classrooms through Mask work is connected to their self-revelation. "All of a sudden they are sitting there behind one of my Masks and it’s all coming out!"

Whatever it is that is being revealed, it is not that content that is the key, rather the process of self-revelation in a supportive yet controlled environment. That process was shown in the narratives to be quite a natural and therapeutic mode.

The philosophy behind La Frenie’s teaching is "developing self-confidence and allowing the discovery of creativity and the independence that already exists in the student." To him, being "self-centred" is a positive quality. He distinguishes between "being self-centered and self-obsessed".

Once you have confidence in your own perspective, you can give more. You don’t have to teach a philosophy of giving; it’s usually there already. People who give without needing a return are people who have been given confidence. Some people give because they get something in return, which is really an exchange, not a gift.

Russell said that "he was shaped by his own high school Drama experiences in many ways. It led to his High school presidency, and being selected as the valedictorian of both grade twelve and thirteen classes." He believes that if he hadn’t had those experiences that he wouldn’t have had the confidence to even audition for a play at University. "Learning so much about human nature gives one a kind of confidence to go on, and a sensitivity to other people. You are not consumed by your fears that they may not like or trust you."

Indeed, confidence and self-esteem are essential to human development and, can give any student the protective armor for successful, non-threatening human interactions. This benefits the individual’s self-actualization and learning processes.

Swartz has taught adults who, if triggered by something, are allowed to talk about it privately in a one-on-one meeting. "If they choose to reveal an emotion in class, then they talk about it in class because that is a form of learning for the group. If there is a discussion in the middle of a class, it is used as a vehicle for talking about an issue." He does not believe, however, that this is therapeutic for the individual.

Russell attempted to deal with his students’ homophobic attitudes through a Dramatic mode. In that mode, he was a witness to "students passionately defending the homosexual person’s right to be what they wanted, with passions that surprised even the students themselves. For those who are involved in the role-playing as well as those who observe it, there is a paradigm shift. They come to see beyond the labels and have enormous personal growth as a result of these experiences."

It was also a therapeutic approach for Russell to use role-playing situations with a student who was the "class clown". He described his attempts to,

Try and make the boy seek a higher level of comedy and to appreciate that there were times for comedy and times when comedy is inappropriate. "We developed a little story in class about a clown who wanted to be taken seriously and at times, he was in role as the clown, and at times he was playing other roles. He was playing the people who needed the clown to be serious. It had an enormous effect on him.

The feedback that he received from other teachers following the time that boy worked with him in the Drama class, indicated to Russell, the success of this Drama work.

"Working in role is taking a risk that a student may ‘break down emotionally’ or ‘break out of role’. The Group Forum shared their concern that "a teacher has to take the risk that a student may punch him (or another student), or start screaming and break down and cry. But, usually, these students feel relieved afterwards."

The issue of emotional distance in role-playing was an expressed concern in the Group Forum. We felt that students should be taught to use their personal experiences as the basis for Drama work, without revealing everything to an audience. "They can reveal things to themselves without revealing anything to the audience, so that the audience can achieve that emotional distance as well."

Dryden thinks that Drama goes beyond being an experience where students are encouraged to express themselves, and reveal themselves. In the act of revealing, he believes that "you display certain truths about yourself that you might not otherwise. And once you get them out, you have a better chance to engage them."

Even though there is the risk of "tears" and other exhibitions of emotional release in the extreme, the narrators recognized the therapeutic value in the process of self-revelation.

A student can gain a much more extensive vocabulary of human relationships from Drama, according to Russell. "There is a heightened level of listening, of concentration on stage in the Theatre and in the rehearsal process" and he thinks that this extends to other situations. He also feels that controlling your emotions is all part of that process.

Giving and receiving feedback in Drama class is therapeutic and part of this dynamic. It is part of the therapeutic process because it has made his students aware of the moment-to-moment growth that occurs. And he listens and learns from them as well.

With respect to this issue, the Group Forum participants believe that mostly students need to vent. "And when students think in a violent way, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are innately violent. In fact, it is just their hormones going crazy and that’s how they deal with it (by thinking in violent images). Today, that is what being thirteen or fourteen is all about. There are too many pressures. "

The Forum members agreed that society is hypocritical for putting adolescents in an environment where they aren’t allowed to express that aspect and yet, want them to be self-aware. "Kids aren’t being allowed to be kids anymore."

Slater has found that "often the simple act of talking as they wish about anything, in a Drama classroom environment, provides students with the safety that they don’t often have in the rough and tumble cafeteria life. Their conversations have convinced him that they’re under pressures that aren’t recognized fully." Both he and Dryden were convinced that the ritualistic exercise of ‘passing the cane’ was an excellent example of promoting this kind of talk. Slater used the experiences that his students related during this exercise to know them better and be able to make specific connections for meaningful lessons.

I think of a student that is currently in my Drama class, who is a Jamaican girl. She is a barrel kid meaning she was apart from her mother for many years and I feel we are providing her with the talking stick and our circle with an opportunity to connect in a meaningful way with peers who are themselves going through difficulties. She is able to share significant information in a safe environment about the process of what it’s like to be new in a country and a new culture and learning to live again with her mother and family after years of separation. She would not have that opportunity in another class.

Slater connects the importance of talk for the ESL student to Dramatherapy. He sees Drama providing the immediacy and a context by which the student learns the necessity of language. "Drama provides that opportunity especially for students who are attempting to integrate into society and want acceptance. It allows them to make mistakes and connect in an authentic way. This is therapeutic because it could only enhance the student’s sense of self-esteem and control over his or her own life."

The opportunity to share meaningful experiences in a safe and supportive context, along with learning a new vocabulary for human interaction, is needed by students. It is found in Drama classes.

However, spontaneous play is not foreign to the elementary school student who has not developed ‘blocks’ to his own creativity. And there is value in the re-introduction of activities that promote spontaneity for the older student in high school.

33. Dramatherapy "Phobia" was a recurring theme of this study. Dramatherapy (not Dramatherapy) "phobia" has been prevalent among teachers and they avoid many significant areas of Drama teaching because they don’t feel "qualified" whatsoever to deal with their students’ "emotions".

The reality of this fear for Russell is: "I can deal with the person exposing their pain and their suffering and calling out for help and I can do whatever I can to help them; but, I am fearful that within a group of adolescents there will be those who are not capable of dealing with the situation in a mature way and it’s that experience that I am most fearful of, the part of it that I can’t control." Slater believes that,

People are afraid of the ramifications and implications of the idea that Therapy creates demi-gods and gurus. The very act of acting is a shedding of layers and is not "showing off" although that comprises a part of it. Showing a vulnerability and a truth that is there but that isn’t always shown is, by its very nature, creating a dynamic between appearance and reality, mask and core mask.

Tyrell had her own story about dealing with Dramatherapy phobia.

She was doing movement work leading up to mask work and the people were lying on the floor doing ‘heavy stuff’. She was questioning whether she was ready to handle this therapeutic kind of work when the phone rang in the studio. It felt like Richard Pochinko, her friend and clown/mask teacher who did this kind of work and had recently passed away, was calling her to give her the go ahead. She felt like a sign was given to her that it was ok to do the work.

So, Tyrell admitted that she doesn’t do ‘it’ because she worries that somebody could get into trouble and she feels that she doesn’t have the proper medical training. "People could go into shock. When you are dealing with childhood memories, incest and traumatic experiences, you could put the person into a state that you can’t get them out of. So, she makes it ‘theatre’." Theatre is her safety net.

One member of the Group Forum admitted that he does risk touching his students because he cannot teach with the fear that what he is teaching will be misinterpreted. He is, however, prepared for that happening. According to La Frenie, Therapy, in general, is unscientific, and a risky business which he finds frustrating.

I don’t think a lot of Therapists are legitimate." He had known a young girl who had been raped and went to a Therapist. In her very first session, the Therapist said that he was going to pretend to be the attacker and he wanted her to say whatever she felt she wanted to say to her attacker. "Perhaps he had a strong reason for wanting to do something like that, but the young girl’s reaction was, ‘Fuck you. I am not coming back here any more’. La Frenie was confused how this method could ever have been therapeutic.

He sees the danger with Drama as Therapy and other forms of Therapy because therapists don’t necessarily take the responsibility for what they have ‘dragged out’ of people. His opinion is that "if a teacher provokes something out of someone in a class, the teacher has to deal with it and not necessarily solve the problem but acknowledge that it came out and help the student over the initial shock of realizing that it is there."

Slater thinks that we have lost common sense in so many ways. He is irked by the fact that we are ruled by fear, and noted the contradiction that we are trying to get students not to be afraid of this, themselves. "Students know their rights but they don’t know their responsibilities. You can’t touch me. You can’t do this. I am dyslexic; I can’t do that. It’s like they have seen too many programs on Law and Order (American television series) and they hear these rights but don’t allow themselves to get into the experience."

The trap to approaching Drama as Therapy was identified in the Group Forum. "You may be looking for a problem that doesn’t exist. This catharsis can be misinterpreted as more than just a release of emotion." That is another fault with Drama as Therapy.

34. In the narratives, a related point emerged regarding the dangerous use of touch as a means of positive reinforcement. Touch, as an aspect of physical contact, is an important element in developing healthy human relationships. Within the Drama classroom, there are opportunities (in trust exercises, where you fall back on people, or Alexander (movement) methods, etc.) to set up these "touch" situations with cautious consideration.

It was the Group Forum’s understanding that students have control of their own on/off switches; they control who touches them and when they are touched and in what way they are touched. Ultimately then, teachers have to be careful that they are not imposing touch on their students if it’s unwanted. "It is absurd that we are not allowed to touch students and show how beneficial it is for them to be patted on the back, for example."

These excerpts have focused on the final, recurring theme of the dangers, risks and traps associated with Dramatherapy in an educational context. Fear of Dramatherapy is a reality among teachers. The psychological term, phobia, accurately defines the perceptions held by Drama teachers, their avoidance behaviour, their suspicions and mistrust of ‘risky’ methods, only because they feel that they lack the confidence, training and experience to deal with emotional work in Drama.

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