If you were wondering what drama therapy was, and how successful it could be, talk to Dr Nira Kaplansky from Israel. Having recently conducted a nation-wide intensive workshop, using art therapy, she says, is “inclusive of invoking imagination that is associated with theatre”. The expert was brought down for a workshop on art and drama therapy by Krita, an organisation that explores alternative methods to dealing with trauma.
Drama therapy, which involves the use of popular theatre techniques like role play, mime and puppetry, for Kaplansky—she is a trauma expert and supervisor, besides being a former director of a leading clinic in Kiryat Shmona—has been a tool that has been helpful in dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. This, in short called PTSD, is something Kaplansky has dealt with extensively through the WaterBirds Project, an international non-profit organisation aimed to help trauma victims all around the world. Kaplansky, who has an MA in Drama Therapy from Surrey University, Roehampton and PhD in PTSD from Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford-UK, relates an incident of the most severe case that she has encountered, where this particular form of therapy worked.
“Back in Israel, there was this security guard at a state prison, who was to chaperone an inmate to a funeral of an inmate, at a neighbouring village. The security guard was handcuffed to the prisoner, and the necessary measures were not taken, considering there was certain rivalry between the village that prisoner belonged to, and the neighbouring village. A massive riot broke out, and the village members, who wanted to keep the inmate, dragged the security guard along with him, and he sustained massive injuries. He fainted several times during the event, while sustaining permanent injury to his eye, that is, he lost his vision,” recalls Kaplansky, who says that, it was not the worst of it. “He could not sleep anymore. He had nightmares. When he used to play with his children, their screams—it is natural since children scream all the time when they play—used to drive him away.”
The man soon became depressed. “The most telling symptom of severe PTSD in this man’s case is that he would freeze mentally and physically for 15 minutes during initial treatment. It is what we call, disassociation,” Kaplansky relates. “We had to engage in several techniques of drama therapy to help him overcome that fear, one of which was to listen to a recorded track of his children screaming on his iPod,” she says.
So, what are some of the most popular techniques that work to overcome trauma? Playback theatre, which renders the actor with the power to transform a traumatic event in their life, has helped. This, Kaplansky feels, is what will help also in India. “Experiences are stored on the right side of the brain, which is responsible for imagination, feelings and artistic perception. To address a personal memory, we have to talk to that memory in the language it is stored,” says Kaplansky, who says that playback theatre provides a traumatised victim with the ability to transform a particular event in their life.
So how does it work? “What we do here,” Kaplansky says, “is that we have the person talk about a transforming event in their life. Then we have a group of actors acting out this event. It is interesting to observe one’s own personal issue as if we are looking at it from the outside. And then, we ask the same person to step forward and change any particular part of the event, and have it acted out again. The transformative aspect of playback theatre can help to shift perspectives.” In short, closure was the most defining aspect of the process.
