Dramatherapy, Beyond Consciousness Towards Awareness

Beyond Consciousness Toward Awareness

An important 3-hour long experimental laboratory to close the first semester of the activities of the Creative Drama & In-Out Theatre and of the FreeMind Theatre Workshop, founded and directed by E. Gioacchini

It can no longer be enough to think that because we are individuals with a conscience it is possible to believe in the harmony of things inside and outside of us, since Freud this in an indisputable truth. What it means to walk a more and more authentic path towards ‘awareness’, well that is a problem still open and without a univocal solution. The Carthesian “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) has now an exposed side to the limitations of the constant temptation to make of the old anthropocentric vision a new tendency dressed up as cult of personality, as technophilia, as extreme individualism of nations and people. Just like ‘development’ is being replaced more and more often by ‘use of resources, sustainable development and growth’, so science and philosophy have re-connoted the individual person as ‘the one who assigns meaning’ and the consciousness of being is no longer enough to define us. So also dramatherapy, in its different applications, offers the possibility to meditate on the actual human condition of the individual and of the dynamics of groups, with a trans-cultural, transcendent approach, which also integrates diversity as a form of enrichment.

Dramatherapy, Emptiness' Fear without Our Mask

Drammaterapia e la Paura del Nulla senza la nostra Maschera

Dramatherapy Process as Shifting Cultivation

Dramatherapy Process as Shifting Cultivation.
(Dramatherapy Backstage, Astra and Fenice
in Sonia, the Rest of My Life, 13 maggio 2011)

Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.

La "shifting cultivation" è una tecnica praticata dalle popolazioni che vivono ai bordi della foresta pluviale sempreverde.
Si tratta di una tecnica tipica nell'agricoltura familiare di sussistenza.
All'inizio della stagione secca avviene l'abbattimento di piccole parcelle della foresta secondaria attraverso i limitati mezzi delle popolazioni locali.

Le ramaglie vengono incendiate, le ceneri che si formano hanno un alto potere fertilizzante.
Poco prima dell'inizio della stagione piovosa vengono seminate diverse colture in consociazione. Molto spesso si tratta di specie amilacee da tubero (manioca, igname, taro, tannia), ma anche banano plantain, mais, arachide. La raccolta di queste specie varia a seconda del ciclo (dai 2-3 mesi fino a più di 24 mesi per le specie a ciclo lungo).
Vengono quindi ripetuti più cicli delle specie a ciclo breve all'interno di queste parcelle, il tutto caratterizzato da una "confusione" d'impianto: la consociazione non viene realizzata in maniera razionale come nell'agricoltura tradizionale, bensì in maniera disordinata. Ciò permette: di limitare gli interventi per l'eliminazione delle erbe spontanee, di far sì che le varie specie possano esplorare il terreno e lo strato aereo secondo le proprie esigenze, di limitare gli attacchi parassitari. Nel giro di pochi anni la fertilità decade quindi le parcelle vengono abbandonate per spostarsi in aree vicine non ancora disboscate. La foresta secondaria avrà una rapida ricrescita dalle ceppaie rimaste nel terreno.

Questo continuo abbattimento della foresta e la sua conseguente ricrescita è in perfetto equilibrio e quindi non viene arrecato un danno all'ecosistema foresta.
(in corsivo i perodi che si prrestano ad una corretta interpretazione della metafora)

Dramatherapy & Word's Value

Dramatherapy Workshop, DramaticaMente Theatre, April 2011 

Recently, I have had a friendly squabble on words with a dear friend of mine on Facebook. We were commenting on the passage by Pessoa I posted here some time ago. Words as simulacrum, words as symbol, words as concept, words as forms.

In the latest half century, the dispute between form and content has suffered a heavy blow with the discoveries (albeit not new ones) that contents have impressed on them the origin of the container and of its forms, whether they be apparent or linked to the symbolic-abstract thought, that casual forms have determined the development of evolution, and that with big numbers statistics always win, but it doesn’t reproduce the reality of thought.

This is a discussion that, at least here, would take us too far. It has ‘dangerously’ permeated our culture with relativism, but it has been necessary, just like in any transition towards a more refined conscience. I wish to take my cue from this to highlight some aspects of our important work, in which each one of you can with good reason feel a ‘soldier’ in the creation of ‘peace’ (I am referring to inner conflicts, obviously!).

My dear friend was expressing a belief which I generally share: we should unpeel reality from the superstructures (the reality we let work inside us: needs and desires) and keep the fruit of truth.

But do these pure nuclei of immanent guide of our plans actually exist? I was highlighting how, even when freeing reality from superstructures (the ones that you and I call frills, gewgaws... you know what I mean), we need to be careful. It is like taking away the shell from a snail! They speak ‘in rites’ (even a building can be a ‘rite’) of our fears, and they are signals, hidden or visible, of what we are, what we have been, what we might be. Along these lines, our ‘dramatherapy theatre’, together with the psychodynamic and creative roots, underlines the anthropological ones, discusses in particular the value of the symbol, of the rite, and with them it gets the participants to ‘play’.

Sometimes, I feel tempted to try a cautious and revealing discussion on Lacan, even with you, who know little of psychoanalysis and maybe of most of philosophy. Some minds fish ideas from the dreams that hang over our heads and they give them to all the other people. Then I realise that all buildings have their limitations, but that they are also an absolute, without comparisons.

So, in practical terms, whether they suddenly spring out of a freshly painted box or move amongst the invisible walls of places that have only been ‘thought’, these are our symbols! May your subconscious keep on working with them, in a productive way!

Backstage Dramatherapy Piece: Sonia, What Remains for me.



A dramatherapic play, written and directed by E. Gioacchini
(Creative Drama & In-Out Theatre)

Friday 13th May 2011. Dramatically Theatre and Creative Drama In & Out are delighted to invite actors and guests to the BackStage of our next pièce in preparation: Sonia, What Remains for Me... This BackStage, open to an audience of experts and general public, will allow us to show, in a live workshop, instruments and methods of dramatherapy theatre in the staging of a play (booking adviced).



Theatre, Actor and Dramatherapy

I hate being reductive, but I find that of summarizing, condensing, filing ideas ‘till they become concepts and concentrated versions of the tale of man to be an invaluable exercise; in this case, it is the profession of the actor. It is f this point of view, that the participants will read... the significant placement of the actor in dramatherapy and what differentiates it from traditional theatre. I am implying here all the other posts already discussed both in the CDIOT blog and in the blog of the Workshop FreeMind, which are preparatory to this discussion.

In Theatre

The Actor emerges from the encounter between the interpreter (specific training, specific artistic personality) and the character (characterisation of a role in the context of a pièce).

So, in theatre as in cinema, the actor is the result of a combination between a personality trained to ‘pretend’ and a character, as wanted by the author and identified by the director. 

The actor, with the whole theatrical machinery (stage setting, organisation), is ‘at the service’ of the text. The Actor emerges from the encounter between the interpreter (specific training, specific artistic personality) and the character (characterisation of a role in the context of a pièce). So, in theatre as in cinema, the actor is the result of a combination between a personality trained to ‘pretend’and a character, as wanted by the author and identified by the director. 

•  The Actor, with the whole theatrical machinery (stage setting, organisation), is ‘at the
   service of" Text;
•  The Text (the play) is ‘at the service’of the community;
•  The Theatre comes from the work of theatre (actor, director) together with community.
  

Theatre is  not a building, nor a theatre company, but rather an (artistic) ‘function’, which is exercised   through  the ‘creative’ exchange between actor and audience. For ‘theatre’ to happen you need at least an actor and a spectator (Grotowsky). The ‘show’ is made up of this interaction.

In Dramatherapy

Dramatherapy Workshop, "The Emotional Ground", DramaticaMente Teatro,
April 2011

• The Text is ‘at the service’ of the actor.
•  The Actor is ‘at the service’ of the interpreter.
•  The Dramatherapy' process moves in the direction of the evolutionary drive of the single personality and of the group, in re-defining resources and conflicts, boundaries and tasks.

In the Dramatherapy Theatre (for example the Creative Drama & In-Out Theatre) the whole "group process of dramatherapy" is ‘at the service’ of community. 

Dramatherapy: The Emotional Ground

The Emotional Ground

This dance is the final moment of our workshop, which explores the development of communication from that of animals to the aware intentionality of a developed being, an act of awareness, indeed a ‘dance’, a symbolic summing up which summarises phylogenesis and ontogenesis. In this experience, the warming up lies in suggesting identifications, sometimes exaggerating roles and attitudes. In the example given in the video, the micro-group (three people) is given an activity based on the idea of ‘memory’ all the way to ‘regret’. Later on, a tabula rasa places the objects on the ground, which is place of origin and primitive place, with a reciprocal contact that is casual: a chemotaxis preceding the development of more refined senses, such as hearing and sight, which will come later on. The participants keep their eyes closed and the only guidance is given by the space around them, free and full. Several million years and... the invertebrate being becomes ‘man’. The development of their senses and their awareness constitute in parallel a mind and a social organisation. This is what we define as culture. Culture determines a different social selection and a different social construction, even different from what instincts suggest. A new dance starts between earth and sky: the capacity of symbolic thinking. ‘Dance’ as a representation of conscience in the ritual passage from the biological to the mental, a bridge between origins and on-going development, in the summarising of different identities, no longer just ‘group’.

A symbolic Easter of peace and serenity

We would like to wish a symbolic Easter of peace and serenity to the whole Workshop and to all those who follow us and are patient with our performances, so wonderfully imperfect and so full of sense. I will do this with a composite of photographs made with some angels stolen in St Peter's by my daughter's camera and a dream that our friend Pulcinella gave us some days ago, fully acting it and combining it with so much emotion.

Thank you all, thank you Pulcinella. Many good wishes, from me and Emiliana.

"Un regalo per voi tutti con l'augurio di una meravigliosa Pasqua di pace e serenità: LA SCALA DELLA VITA.

Che belle le nuvole! E’ questo ciò che penso, mentre nella dimensione onirica di me adolescente cammino tra loro. I miei piedi scalzi ad accarezzare nel mio incedere spensierato questa morbida ovatta candida. Improvvisamente, innanzi a me una lunghissima scala a pioli di legno grezzo, con il naso all’insù la guardo per un attimo, con curiosità, cercando di capire dove può condurre. La vedo dissolversi tra i cumuli e con spensierata incoscienza, lentamente, inizio a la mia salita. Un piolo per volta. Decine, centinaia di piccole stecche di legno si inseguono sotto i miei piedi. Quando finirà? L’eccitazione della scoperta pian piano lascia il posto alla stanchezza. Ho paura. Non so cosa fare, non ne vedo la fine, vorrei tornare indietro, ma ci ripenso, non posso e non voglio arrendermi. Guardo in basso la lunghissima scala che si perde nel nulla, mi aggrappo con forza ai bordi che mi sostengono; sento che non ho più forza e la paura, la stanchezza, il dolore del lungo cammino lasciano ora spazio alla disperazione. Maledico la mia curiosità e mentre mi volto esausta per riprendere faticosamente il mio percorso... cosa vedo? Un enorme portone che prima non c’era! Afferro i battenti di bronzo, fauci di leone a sostenerle e con la poca forza ancora rimastami batto due colpi. Subito, come per magia, le grandi e pesanti ante si schiudono morbide quasi fossero ali e ciò che i miei occhi vedono ha davvero dell’incredibile. Un immenso giardino ombreggiato da alberi fioriti in una radiosa giornata di primavera inoltrata. Giù nel fondo una staccionata di legno e oltre solo cielo azzurro e nuvole. Tutti i colori hanno un’intensità tale che ne rimango rapita. Nel naso odore di muschio, fiori ed erba tagliata, ma ciò che maggiormente attrae la mia attenzione è il lento incedere di figure umane, tutte rigorosamente vestite solo di bianco. Una coppia in tipico stile Belle Epoque: lei sotto un enorme cappello, stretta in un bustino che le segna la vita, cammina ondeggiando la sua ampia gonna, accarezzando i fili d’erba sotto di sé. Per ripararsi dal sole, ha un graziosissimo ombrellino di pizzo. Accanto a lei un giovane uomo con i baffi all’insù e un cappello a cilindro le porge il braccio e l’ascolta rapito. Poco distante, un bimbo gioca rincorrendo il suo cerchio, un giovane soldato di una guerra non voluta appoggiato ad un albero, ascolta attento i racconti di due vecchi non più stanchi seduti su una panchina di pietra. Tutti nei loro abiti candidi sorridono e si muovono con dolcezza in quel verde e quell’azzurro limpido riscaldati dai raggi del sole che filtrano tra i rami. Quanta pace, quanta felicità! Sdraiata nell’erba, mi lascio cullare da questa sensazione e travolgere dall’emozione. Non vorrei più scendere quella scala e lasciare quel giardino, vorrei che il tempo si fermasse ora, per sempre, ma è mattino, mia madre mi chiama e risvegliandomi mi riporta alla realtà. “Perché mentre dormivi sorridevi? Cosa stavi sognando piccola mia?”- e lei - “Il Paradiso mamma!”.
Un sogno di tantissimi anni fa, ero piccolissima, non l'ho mai dimenticato. Forse è davvero così, chi può dirlo. Con affetto, Pulcinella.

The Planet made with Fear

@ director
“Hitler got it all wrong: if he had lived now he would have sent the Germans with their large boats to invade the world and nobody would have been able to stop them, because, well, there are humanitarian reasons.” This is fear, no, it is terror. The murder of Vittorio Arrigoni is terror and it is terror when diplomacy prostitutes ‘humanity’ with the law of the strongest.

"Vittorio Arrigoni", picture taken from the
facebook account

I have recently reminded of this a patient of mine who suffers from panic attacks: he could tenderly appeal to his own humanity, feel it as a value, let it, as well as the medications, protect him, while a hormonal storm was going through his body, but without causing damage. Yes, our fear can protect us from fear, when the events outdo reality, and then the panic stops hurting us, rather, it stops altogether. Just this year it is 30 years that I’ve been treating patients with panic attacks and I know that the reassurance “nothing more serious can happen to you” or more dreadful than what is already happening, when you are caught by panic, is of no use to calm you down. It is useful at the beginning, to clear the head from the confusion between physical and psychological, but when you then need to work them together (because nothing is only physical or only psychological), even ‘panic’ is useful to overcome panic. Then the conscience of values above our contingencies and our ritual worries acts as a ‘hook’ to which we can strongly hang our ‘salvation’. It takes us back to the awareness, beyond existence, to be beings who imperfectly attribute sense, but who, nevertheless, have the possibility of making mistakes and therefore learning.
A great man used to state (though I am not fond of quotations) that other people’s mistakes are useful to us because we could not learn everything from the ones we commit in our own limited existence... A nice definition that reassures on the issue of mistake, pushing the pedal towards responsibility, rather than ‘fault’.

Vittorio can save a patient (provided that they wish it) from a panic attack, from a hypochondriac thought, just when he, the volunteer, is choking for real, probably bound by a metal tie, in an abandoned room in Gaza. His life, his passion, made of the same catecholamines running abundantly in someone taken by panic, lead us to think, to feel in ourselves disapproval, no... anger and outrage, and then finally sorrow, instead of fear. It does not all happen just because we think about it, just because we read, moved, a newspaper article, but it happens more quietly, if our soul is nourished by events beyond the boundaries of our own walls. It is an internal ‘birth’, which from inside makes you feel free from fear, but able to experience it, if it is human. Inhuman are some deaths and tragedies, inhuman is the panic if its cradle is a civilisation with blinkers, which invents a thousand contraptions to photograph the world without really ‘reflecting’ it.

In the last few years, on the web and in TV programmes, I have often heard saying that “with the economic crisis the statistics of panic attacks has rocketed”, then it was the earthquake in L’Aquila, then the murders of Sarah and of Yara... Let me be ironic about the sharp scientific sense of those who use this information to ‘induce’ to crime... We know that a significant number of accidents in the air can raise the levels of fear to fly, that the climate of uncertainty terrorism has culturally created has a deep impact on our security, outside, but also internally. We do not need that professional skill that jackals have selected for biological survival to survive in us as well, preying on those who have already been preyed on: the information that uses itself to survive, through tragedy or fear. This is not ethical and it does not help those who suffer from ‘fear’.

In our brave theatre, but full of fear, we are aware that we have represented, in three different editions, The Kamikaze and that we have recorded it, while in Gaza and in Israel people were dying for real. We know that we have staged Bluebeard, while two young promising women were having their lives violated. The awareness and the reflection protect you form the deception of history, of the dictator, of the professional, of yourself. One can fight with values, without shooting, without arbitrary boundaries (when ideological ones, whether they rise or fall), against indifference, clichés, and comfortable armchairs, until an unfounded terror comes over us, unfortunately, and induces us to fight pointlessly against ourselves. What am I saying? It is intellectually honest to recognise that the failed integration between personal and social values, in culture as in the individual, may lead to our body and our mind working in haphazard ways, ways that are not useful to our own existence or to that of others.
Thank you, Vittorio.

Thanks to Emiliana Bianchi (Scotland,) for her translation

OTHER VISION: a musical performance with voice and celtic Harp. Performers, N. Maroccolo and C. Lauri

On 3rd February, in Rome, Creative Drama In-Out Theatre presents an intense performance by voice and Celtic harp, as part of a Cinema-Drama Therapy workshop, which is open to both professionals and the general public.

A performance by N. Marroccolo e C. Lauri  at the Gallery of Modern Art (Ardea),
dedicated to Giacomo Manzù', 8th October 2010

 

Nina Marroccolo and the musician Cristiana Lauri, modern and delicate bards, following the intuition and the need for Other Visions, act and play in music and song on the stage of cinema and drama therapy, creating magic in a singular artistic performance. They will awaken the emotions of the audience, offering them an ideal mirror in which to find themselves.

Entrance is free (booking advised)

INFO: info.atelier@dramatherapy.it

A Cinema-Drama Therapy Workshop: A Camconcorder Wading the Pond

Rome, 3rd February 2011
The point of view of a camcorder wading through the pond and filming both above and below its surface. Half frog and half Prince, the actor-character is led inside the very film to revisit his own actions and clothes, while the process of dramatherapy unfolds: cinema-drama therapy.

The workshop will be preceded by the presentation of the book:
Shaping the Sight, by Plinio Perilli (2009) Milan: Mancosu
Opening performance: Nina Maroccolo

leggi il COMUNICATO STAMPA
prenotati info.atelier@dramatherapy.it