First of all, drama is a
powerful and efficient learning tool. It powerfully invites everyone
to reexamine their own behaviour and serves as a catalyst for
promoting personal development and change. Drama provides empirical
learning through a holistic approach to personality. Theatre is the
art of the present moment, because participation requires
presence and provides an opportunity of revealing images,
situations and problems of everyday life through a momentary
empirical framework. That is why drama and dramatic forms are the
part of a wider and long applied approach of psychosocial
intervention in working with people with specific needs that is
called art therapy.
The
use of dramatic forms and theatre stimulates and encourages
self-consciousness and helps people explore the very idea of change
and the influence that change may have on their lives. Therefore, it
is used for working with most diverse social groups: children,
disabled persons, social misfits, inmates, people suffering from
psychiatric disorders, minority social groups, but also with the
so-called healthy population. When theatre and drama are used
in working with some of these or other specific groups, in local
areas, beyond a conventional theatre, exploring their stories, with
the possibility of creating a dialogue with the audience i.e.
narrower or wider social community – it can be defined as an
applied theatre.
Applied
theatre and drama mainly take place and are implemented in practice
in the form of drama workshops. The workshop has a predesigned
purpose, tasks and objective in working with a certain social group.
However, the group itself determines the direction in which the
workshop shall develop and the potential final product – a play.
Drama workshop differs from a classical theatre in the way that the
border between the spectator and the performer is erased here and all
the participants occasionally play both roles. However, there are
groups and processes that are not strictly planned, but the group
assisted by the facilitator entirely plays it by the ear. Hence, it
depends on the circumstances, expectations and tasks.
Within
the workshop, first through games, exercises and creative
assignments, and then through a series of dramatic improvisations
taken from the real life, situations are analysed and new potential
solutions derived. We ask, reveal/enlighten and consider the personal
behaviour issue, choices we make, the issue of one’s own
responsibility within set social standards, but also within the
essence and meaning of life itself.
The
play as the product of the process may have a multiple role and
meaning. It is a sublimation of personal research, and a joint focus
point of the group regarding some issue or phenomenon; it also allows
the participants to freely express themselves in a creative manner
and finally it can be an instrument for a dialogue with the social
community (either with the micro system that the participants are in
or with a wider social community) and for recognition by the public.