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

Cinema-Dramatherapy & Dramatherapy: a new Resouces Training starts in Rome

As part of the new Dramatherapy for Resources Training, starting on 9th April in Rome, is a module on cinema-dramatherapy. The scientific back up of the course is by the Dramatherapy Workshop Freemind, under the aegis of the Italian Society of Experimental and Clinic Applied Hypnosis and of the Institute Roman School Rorschach.

A shot from a dramatherapy piece,
December 2007

The Course, directed by the Roman psychiatrist and psychotherapist Ermanno Gioacchini, will be organised in seminars, conferences and evening workshops (Friday nights), with the participation of trainers having a psychology background and of trainers coming from the world of entertainment. The methodology that will be used is based on the principle that dramatherapy can be used as a method allowing the participants to express creatively their own ‘artistic process’ through a wide range of activities, such as acting, hypnodrama, storytelling, music, play, mime, and dance.

Participants will be guided to experimenting and working on a personal interpretation of the language of theatre, which goes through both the stages of self-discovery, discovery of one’s body and its expressive potential, and the stage of reformulation of a new relationship with the outside world – space, objects and other people.

The first meeting will be held on Friday 9th April, at 8.00 pm. Places are limited.

For information and registrations, please contact:
CDIOT - Tel 0039-335-8381627 - Fax: 0039-06-86211363/70
E.mail, info.atelier@dramatherapy.it
Website, http://www.drammaterapia.com/

Photo: Rome Theatres, by C. Gioacchini

THERE ARE KEYS THAT MAKE A LOCK, DID YOU KNOW THAT?

There are keys that make a lock, did you know that?
Let’s explain. Those of us who know J. Cortazar will not fail to consider that something intimate and prophetic connects this great Argentinian writer with the French playwright Ionesco. Let’s try and bring them close, forgetting for a moment that they were in different places, times and were threading different paths. They both create a painful caricature of reality; they christallise it in stereotypes that only a really critical conscience can manage to renounce. It’s too easy to smile at the image of the watch that runs after the wrist, that runs after the arm, that runs after their owner! Too easy to read the worry of ‘reason’ in the face of the population of a whole town transforming into rhinoceros as simple non-sense. We shouldn’t consider a single character, because he is simply a crutch for a deeper theme. If even this theme disappeared from the dialogues, then the sense of the play would vanish. It is YOUR thought that lives in those characters, for the time of a reading or of a staging, and that needs to understand. The language helped us evolve, until we transformed, but it can hide under the thick folds of the rhinoceros’ skin; the conscience forgets it is a distinct identity.

I appreciate, but at the same time grin, at the government’s attempt to reassure us: Italy is safe from Swine Flu! Be brave, my friends - known and still to know – we will not change into pigs; in spite of the fact that we more and more show their habit of feeding on pretty much anything, real and virtual, they offer us. Thus we forget we are still ourselves, surrounded by many landscapes, often disguised by a thousand masks that Lacan invites us to observe! Boundaries are, oh, so important, when we can move them, contract them and widen them, until we can exalt or reassure! How much ‘imprisonment’ in the freedom of speech and how much freedom in the imprisonment of our solitude! Exasperate and grotesque individuals in Rhinocéros, pityingly asking for some relief to the rigidity of conscience-less behaviour, in which language loses its original symbolic power of the unconscious (Lacan); until their very appearance is transformed, with their language and the underpinning power of the signifier (in Ionesco) and the of the stereotypy of the character (in Cortazar). Our eyes and our ears perceive wandering and empty symbols that lack the possessions that make them historical for the experience of the individual and of the group. There is where they can be kept and given new meaning, just like in the analytical experience, that is related to the underlying meaning of the metaphor, to the metonymy proper of the dream. One needs a new fusion that gives back the power of attributing meaning and this happens between the actor and the audience. A key is a cryptic condensation of what the author meant, it pushes against doors without locks, without entrance. Non-sense spreads, words become empty, yet there is one hope: “The text can still be written”, Barthes would say. Weakened, the pretentious structuralist thought must surrender. The itinerary must be remade inside the character represented, because the foolish delirium of ‘fama’ is so disarming, while ‘cronopio’ tidies up his own folly!

The noise of a key, something is turning, the key turns itself, unknown rooms.

The Key

Seems I've been waiting half a life/ For things to arriveThat won't come/ Seems I've been waiting all this time/ For the perfect rhyme/ Now it's done/ But I forgot what it was I'm looking for/ I found the Key but not the door/ Nothing more/ HeyeyeyIs there anybody home tonight?/ I can hear you on the other side/ But I can't get throughI say heyeyey/ There's no beginning, there's no end/ A vicious circle 'cause I cannot mend/ The love I feel for you.
....

"...l'avant-garde c'est la libertè!"

On Thursday night we had the first meeting of the workshop When ‘Absurd’ crosses Theatre: Eugéne Ionesco a baptism at the spring of ourselves, at the beginning, where there’s vague shape and intense drive. Ionesco will be with us. We have forced him with the enticing message (but did it work?) that we are an anti-piece, like him, behind him; with the enticement that we have been following, now for a few years, the idea that the artistic process cannot be separated from the final product, or the consequence is a praise to the narcissism of art, like a monument that is made of marble and incorruptible or made of wood and combustible, a reductive amplifier of ‘fear’!

He twisted his nose a bit, I can assure you. That chubby-chops face is only the casual deception for those who pretend they have not received and provocation or stimulus, without the disguises of didactics, the perverse connections with the political, artistic or cultural establishment of each and every time period, with the aim to frighten the impersonal habit.
On the contrary, the idea of a dramatherapy that crystallises its process to turn it into theatre was taking shape. Founding it a r o u n d the Ionescian question of the Rhinoceros was the best possible choice. Not long ago, I was leisurely browsing one of those books you buy for a morbid curiosity and because it has been suggested to you: Theatre without a Director. It was suggested to me a couple of years ago by a representative of the European Association for Theatre Culture. The book itself has been written by the artistic director of this Association, Jurij Alschitz. Many passages of his text, so humanly autobiographic – an autobiography as search… - interested me, but one in particular summarised what I had been thinking for a while: “What I’m interested about in art not so much the final product, as the natural and spontaneous process that leads to it” (1). The idea of the artistic process as a process of truth, of hermeneutic research for a meaning to existence, so closely connected to what is creative in the shamanic vision, now showed me a further testimony. This director creates his/their theatre around the humanity of his actors; he bends destiny to the creative vision of what is happening and can be observed! And isn’t it Ionesco who states: “Je crois que la création artistique est spontanée!” [“I believe that artistic creation is spontaneous”](2)?

A forced analogy with what, in a different context, happens in the dramatherapic process, free from the rules of the stage - if they are too tight - and which makes the actors’ path its end, rather than its means. There are no less sacred Allelujas exploding in the streets, when they bring to successful communication, or on stage, where the two sensible sides of theatre, actor and audience, come into contact. It could be a stage diluted in the circular structure of Grotowsky’s theatre, or a traditional one, as long as it is possible to discover this modesty as a shadow that finds again the birth of drama every time it meets it. How enticing is the idea of gathering around an idea and letting it shape our intentions, disembodied by back-stages and floodlights, and of observing the tender wisdom of Bérgerer, when he advises his friend Jean to see a doctor.

I have an ambition, my strongest and most challenging: giving again visible humanity to Ionesco’s characters. Let’s be clear: not that they need it! They exist like this, human ‘capsules’ sleeping between language and logic, fear and recklessness, quarrelling with life, born to interrogate, between a chasm and anarchy. What would happen if they go through the soul of our actor? We are not on stage, we are in the particular context of dramatherapy, in the virtual space in which the ‘as if’ meets delirium and memory, with lapse and action; in which tenacious training (long live Grotowsky!) measures - rather than containing - the distance between reality and trauma, between pain and drive for life. The crossing will take a new appearance, it will leave something behind and it will take something on again. It’s a cat-walk, often silent, amongst an audience that has not paid, because invisible; mates of another time and of other stories. Then the message of the avant-guarde: “L’avant-guarde, c’est la liberte’” (3) takes on a new, human character, which is able to think over the transformations and the changes…over its identity.

(1) Alschitz, Jurij (2007) Theatre without Director, Pisa: Titivillus (p.19)
(2) Ionesco, Eugène, Expérience du théatre, in Notes et contre-notes, Paris: Gallimard (p.48)
(3) Ionesco, Eugène, Discours sur l'avant-garde, in Notes et Contre-notes, Paris: Gallimard (p. 91)

WHEN THE ABSURD GOES THROUGH THEATRE: EUGENE IONESCO

Dramatherapy Workshop, Thursday 30th April the 30th 2009 , 8.30 pm

The Creative Drama & In-Out Theatre, founded and directed by E. Gioacchini, sponsors a Workshop open to the public and dedicated to the works of Eugéne Ionesco. Two lecturers and an actress will be there to describe the author’s ideas and works, between acting and story-telling.

Outside totalitarianism and boundless liberalism, we find Ionesco’s invitation not to stop our search for our own meaning, freeing it from the apology of the individual and of their historical Babel, from the false reasons of freedom and of its limitation. It is a lesson in theatre and in life, artistic lyricism and aesthetics of reason. A workshop for professionals and not, through the enlightening vision of the playwright and with the scalpel of dramatherapy.
Directedby the psychotherapist E. Gioacchini, the actress N. Maroccolo, and the literary critic P. Perilli.
Free entrance, booking advised.
For info, call: (0039) 3403448785

Photo: Rhinoceros, by Albrecht Durer, 1915

LIFE, PANIC & DRAMATHERAPY: Letter Box and Road Sign

An anonimous letter box, to mean something to everybody and to each one; a road sign only pointing at directions, without places. Formal elements of contents in progress. Used objects to invent as new. And if that one would be starting and arrival point of your post, perhaps it is about yourself; the one you send something is absolutely in a different place and if he reaches you at once you will be posting, he will only observe your gesture, but the letter will already be too far.

Regarding the Road Sign…if it were there, driven in the place you are looking for, decisions and choices place? Dismissed objects from their common sense –that’s how Cortazar exhorted to distrust that cloud, hanged in the sky, “…its name catalogued in the memory…”**.

Grotowsky, without any pity, undressed the actor’s performance till the intellectual and affective despair having to rebuild it, bit by bit, beyond any mnemonic automatism, so that it would become just of “that actor’s act”, offered to the audience and himself.

Unconscious and Collective Myths crossing -through a purification from good sense and morality drosses, if they only were adopted- in the mise-en-scène.
You will come out, without being written from that letter box, and you will sniff the directions, trying each moment to avoid the marked ones, rather relying on your smell and sight, foot-prints and birds’ flight. You will make it yours and won’t get lost, Don Juan affirmed in the desert of Castaneda, so you will have to reformulate your exploration’s reasons, while detecting.

Mr. Hube, in a formal manner, let the tip of his tongue slide on the envelope border , sealing it before posting. He ardently desired it would anticipate his arrival in that county where he was waited. The trip would last for long, three days; he wore his overcoat, took his hat and left with his well polished car for that occasion. It so happens that the Postal Service had announced a general strike on the second day of his departure and that blessed Sign would have been tamper with, by some guy joking. Nobody arrived from no where, but everybody arrived to te starting place punctually.

** "Castigarse los ojos mirando eso que anda por el cielo y aceptar taimadamente su nombre de nube, su replica catalogada en la memoria" , taken from La tarea de ablandar el ladrillo in "Hystorias De Cronopios Y De Famas", by Julio Cortazar, 1962

Photo: "Road Sign", by E. Gioacchini, 2006

STEP TRAIL

@Director

Once I wrote the following short piece for a young woman who was feeling low. A physical problem was consuming, together with her body, also the energy that the body supports. She was English, I wrote to her in English; I had never seen her, I knew about her problem, she knew I wanted to help.
No contract or notified consent, but the condivision of a moment between a doctor and a patient, who would never be his patient, if not in the reliance/trust of a moment. The operation brought her 'luck'!
Please, don't ask me to translate it into Italian: it was conceived to be in English, but try and... fearlessly climb up!

"Come close… Once there was a steep trail that was sometimes chosen as a passageway by the rains in winter and much rarer by a solitary wayfarer. Never at night, though... the trail was always there, but it seemed that even the moon avoided it, so hidden amidst the thorns and bushes. Season after season it was shunned, viewed as inaccessible because it was out of the way or because there were less steep paths in the mountains.One day, unable to endure its fate no longer, the trail decided to slide down, tired with the life. It waited until the winter floods arrived, when the water wildly sweeps away all sorts of things in its path… and it threw itself into the downward descent during the first big thunderstorm… When it finally reached the bottom, the trail felt endless pleasure, stretching out in the plains, the sun warming every once inaccessible corner, and the sounds of a place that is no longer solitary, yet…... soon the trail became bored and longed for the steep thoughts it used to have alone on the western side of the tall mountain… The trail could no longer return uphill … so tired and dejected, it let the current carry it further down... ending up in the bed of a stream, where it found itself bathing the feet of a little girl … Slightly fearful yet curious, the trail – yes, that precise trail, so used to precipices -- climbed up the little girl’s legs… entered her thoughts… and silently convinced her to be taken once again to the mountain top, nestled now in her fresh, curious mind".

While thinking I would put this here as a post, to mean the use of energy in the theatre of life, I received a comment from Nina on Mr Hube's contribution. Incredible! A mountain there, a mountain here... Maybe telepathy does exist?! I've always believed it....

@ Nina -Indaco-
"...Because we come from water in the hapiest hours"

The story of the ‘path’ is my story.
Apparently, the journey seems to take shape at an extraordinary time of lull: the sense of exploration - vanished. I leave triumphs and victories to sadness, to a body that finds it hard to answer - it too thousands of years old.
This path - ‘ME’, is blocked, inaccessible, surrounded by thorny bushes and shrubs: not even that pale moonlight is soothing. The wonderful satellite is covered by a heavy layer of gauze. As if affected by blindness...it doesn’t enlight.
Does the journey stop at the departure?
No. The journey in which I was a Cortàzar’s Tiger in Humboldt, then Nina, in Checkov’s Seagull; now, definitely alone, I decide to be body and soul of a Sacred Mountain.

Answer: The exploration doesn’t end if I decide to stop.
Question: Compulsory stop?
Question: Have the signs disappeared?
Answer: I wait and, while waiting, I learn.We don’t know anything. We can sniff like dogs, leave it to intuition, welcome the pre-existent, enhance the mind, go along with the unconscious, found again the republic of the ‘I’ with drama and Ypnos.
Not exactly aware of having an unsuspected hurry, I find out that sadness is tired and it would like to set free from its sad condition.
And this is how I set myself the task of depressing depression, channelling a greater will, an energy that was thought exhaust and “scattered between brain and body” with the devastating fury of a storm on the peak of a Mountain: who was I – or the ‘I’ – or the Unconscious – or the Subconscious.
Does it matter?
It matters to know that I’ve lived this kind of paralysis forcing my Self to stone myself as if following a principle of self-harm.
This time I ‘slide down’ because I’m the one who decides to do it. Almost a shock-self-therapy.
And now a storm, like a frontal attack by fighter-bombers, comes like a benediction: I start rolling, I take with me all I encounter - including shrubs and thorny bushes; it’s a scuffle, a rough-and-tumble of stones, rocks, water, sticks and beating, clubs and clubbing…
“I’m not here anymore” I think, when I reach the valley.
The sun is warm, its warmth mitigates the pain. Finally light!
And yet…

…this valley is motionless. Nothing interesting happens here.
I know the journey doesn’t end here: I need to slide further down.
Down, further down, until I deposit my remains on the bed of a stream: “…Because we come from water in the happiest hours” he said.

If I came from water to get back to water, then I was still stuck at the departure.
No. Before being a Mountain, I had been a Seagull, and before that a Tiger, a woman, a child, a foetus. The origin, the sign, the language.
Universe: all in the Whole.

Photo: the caption to the picture that Nina has suggested is really good. It's from Jerry Uelsmann's Woman River. Because of copyright, we cannot show it here - we are not here privately, but with the sponsor of a Scientific Association - SSISCA. If you're interested, you can find it following these links:
http://www.uelsmann.com/
http://pdngallery.com/legends/uelsmann/
Translation, Thanks to E. Bianchi

VIVA La VIDA

As we often said, our meeting, here, doesn’t mean a therapeutic setting virtually extended to a group; the blog is not a therapeutic place. Surely, the personal and group workshop’s thinking, with its specific dynamics, is a “self-awareness process” here going on… A sort of a parallel discussion as it works in the workshops, regarding the group’s ideas along a dramatic path. This place works constantly through a level of abstraction and “falsification of the ideas” that often takes the readers into a cloudy, new and unexplored way to think. I mean that group dynamics, each time created, made of expectations -motivations- and supported by a specific training -drama-therapeutic method-; the challenge is to explore the intimate relationship between the actor’s personality and a “Performing Ego” or “Self-Performer” -the character-, letting figure out contradictions and permissions. Personally, I mean this as a “restitution to reality deed”. Even though we recreate it inside our mind -through the drama process-, it deserves to see us linked to it, beyond any presumptuous act of a cold objectiveness. It’s true, reality determines us, but immediately, as we meditate on this fact, we re-define the reality. A reciprocal process now available to the dramatherapic understanding.

People generally say that for each event correspond an effect, but in the psychological field, event and effect constantly influence each other -a circular process! This discussion would take us far, even talking about ethics and mind ecology, or that constant “miracle” of perception along the complex path from what is perceived to the finest thinking abstraction on that one. The last posts, as inputs, recently written on these pages, had the goal to be a challenge to read inside the shadows of our daily life, through instruments as cinema, theatre, fairy tales an music…
A warm-up that goes along the work in our meetings and the invitation to the actors and guests to enrich it with stimuli and notes.

A sea front is particular place, with the formality of whom is aiming innocent at making us have a walk; it is always that water shed border between the sea and the earth, the origin and the landing place. Do you really mean that, motionless, there is only the sunset and dawn sight to capture us?
I say an ancient memory does exist... Then, I propose you an ordinary one, not meant to be ordinary…to chorally remind us that it’s only us to exclaim Viva La Vida, on this wonderful and dangerous round world! In this case, Cold Play are right: whether kings or mendicants.

Viva la Vida, by Cold Play
"I used to rule the world/ Seas would rise when I gave the word/ Now in the morning I sleep alone/ Sweep the streets I used to own/ I used to roll the dice/ Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes/ Listen as the crowd would sing:/ “Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”/ One minute I held the key/ Next the walls were closed on me/ And I discovered that my castles stand/ Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sandI hear Jerusalem bells are ringing/ Roman Cavalry choirs are singing/ Be my mirror my sword and shield/ My missionaries in a foreign field/ For some reason I cannot explain/ Once you know there was never, never an honest word/ That was when I ruled the world/ It was the wicked and wild wind/ Blew down the doors to let me in/ Shattered windows and the sound of drums/ People could not believe what I’d become/ Revolutionaries Wait/ For my head on a silver plate/ Just a puppet on a lonely string/ Oh who would ever want to be king?/ I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing/ Roman Cavalry choirs are singing/ Be my mirror my sword and shield/ My missionaries in a foreign field/ For some reason I cannot explain/ I know Saint Peter won’t call my name/ Never an honest word/ And that was when I ruled the world/ Hear Jerusalem bells are ringings/ Roman Cavalry choirs are singing/ Be my mirror my sword and shield/ My missionaries in a foreign field/ For some reason I cannot explain/ I know Saint Peter will call my name/ Never an honest word/ But that was when I ruled the world"

Movie: Official Promo Video for new single from Coldplay, "Viva La Vida", taken from the Album Viva La Vida -Or Death And All His Friends-
Photo: "Sea Front", 2009

The Symptons

Secret folds are in our soul, where there’s no distinction between huge and small, beautiful or ugly, something more or less important. Sometimes, they stretch, letting the coloured untidy shadows of our dreams or dark ceilings memories slip away…

The strident logic of enormous thinking machines, with two arms and hands, has always preferred to set them in the night sleep, or in some jester’s oddness not telling the truth.

Others times, however, they own the hurry of an exciting discovery, made by patterns and affections, past and origins; the reason humility isn’t always enough to allow it a space. Better to imprison them through feelings, running over the body without breath, harboured in small caves, not recognizable, almost lost, misunderstood traces, the symptons.

Panic, The Smiths
"Panic on the streets of London/ Panic on the streets of Birmingham/ I wonder to myself/ Could life ever be sane again/ On the Leeds side-streets that you slip downI wonder to myself/ Hopes may rise on the Grasmeres/ But Honey-Pie you're not safe here/ So you run down to the safety of the town/ But there's Panic on the streets of Carlisle/ Dublin, Dundee, Humberside/ I wonder to myselfBurn down the Disco/ Hang the blessed D.J./ Because the music that they constantly play/ IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE/ Hang the blessed D.J./ Beacuse the music they constantly play/ On the Leeds side-streets that you slip down/ On the provincial towns you jog 'round".

Music: "Panic", by Morrissey Marr, The Smiths, taken by the Album T"he World Won't Listen", 1987

Photo: "Symptons", by E. Gioacchini, 2007

Cinema-Dramatherapy: A Special Party

On Cine-Dramatherapy Stage
“A SPECIAL PARTY”,
Taken From "RUDOPH", a Dramatherapy Play (2007)
Written and Realised by E. Gioacchini

Let the Party start!

These are Claude and Mary. They participate in Sara’s Birthday. Georgia is already in with the other guests. She is in conflict with her boy-friend, Rudolph. He will come later.
Mary -We’re always late!
Claude -Honour guests are always wanted!
Mary -How elegant you are! Hold on a second…let me…
Georgia -(opening the door) Here I am! Hi guys! How smart you both are! Saraaa... guess what? Two special guests...here!
Sara -Oh friends… Wacht out! This is my place, not Giorgia's!
Georgia -Home made pastries! Help yourself! Sara has a party once a year...
Claude –Delicious…
Georgia -Robert, anything else?
Robert -Yes...thanks. What about Rudolph, where is he?
Georgia -He will be here soon...
Robert -You know..how much I miss those amazing moments... with him...reading and that vintage wine!
Sara -Georgia, Rudolph is here! Robert, pay attention… Giorgia is kidnapping you!
Georgia -Well...I'll go to rescue your friend!

Rudolph has come

Georgia –Welcome Darling!!
Rudolph -Flowers for you!
Sara -Thank you, really beautiful...
Giada -Please, take off your overcoat. Come on Rodolfo, join the party!
-The Party goes on-
Rudolph -Georgia...sorry...I'll go to get a tissue...

Dialogue between Rudolph and Georgia

Rudolph has got back the tissue. He is going to leave, but just then Jane comes and there a short conversation takes place. Suddenly Georgia comes in. She is surprised to see them together, especially upset to realize a sort of complicity between them. She is hurt really bad.
Jane -What are you doing here…all by yourself?
Rudolph – Here only for a few seconds…I need a tissue.
Jane - I see..with all that confusion, voices, music and food! You don’t love these things too much Rudolph. Do you?!
In the while, Georgia that has been standing at the door entrance and hearing all, comes in, watching Rudolph right in his eyes and giving her backs to Jane.
Georgia – (raising the voice) And what do you love Rudolph? You don’t love much confusion, friends…and what do you love?
Rudolph –Well, now it’s not the right moment Georgia…Jane was just saying that…
Georgia –Jane? Good Jane…that loves so much to be close to you, telling you how much she’s sympathetic…How much she is like you! Good…cause she always more silently tries to be noticed…Really courageous, my compliment, also while I’m here!
Jane, really upset, leaves the room.
Georgia -(talking to Jane) Right, good…go, go…
Rudolph –You’re saying foolish things! She has only said two words and you are making up all this story…
Georgia –Right, too much for you…But what do you know of two, ten, thousand words? For you words are a treasure…not to be wasted. What do you know about that. You are…few words, few smiles, little confusion…you are modest! Actually…I’m realizing…I don’t know what you would say if you will able to have some affairs with…
Georgia –Now you are exaggerating! You are shouting…maybe they are hearing all over there…
Georgia –And let them hear it! Jane will have already told everything to them…Stop it…with that dull face as I were mad! I’m not mad! I’m just tired…(Georgia starts to cry) Tired of your silence, to understand when you are with me or if you aren’t, if I talk too much and sometimes to feel even embarassed if I’m glad!
Rudolph –You glad? Sometimes you are besides yourself…as now! I’m tired too. I came here especially for you, but you get excited if I just speak with a common friend!
Georgia –Excited, you say? At least I’m alive! You, on the contrary, you are dampened! Get rid of that sad expression, always trying to gain sympathy for your damned background! Open your eyes, mouth and stop to escape from the world… You’re not the “snowman” anymore! I don’t want you to look at me like this! Look at yourself!
(Thanks to Carlotta Casalini for the translation)

What If I Get Stuck?

Once upon a time, there was a person in front of me and I was there, advising her on how to overcome a particular fear to do something that she actually wished to do.

I told her: “You know what you should do when you are stuck? You shouldn’t try to un-block anything, you simply ‘do’ that thing…Try and think…as long as you try and force yourself to un-block, you establish the block. As if it weren’t you the person who needs to overcome the block; as if it were natural…but recognizing your frailty…rather, write -she feared writing- anything that comes! And your soul will spring out like a mountain spring, without the fear of going wasted or of being strong or weak or of being already prepared for the low-land path. Each and everyone of us has behind them a large glacier, a genetic one, an acquired one, a subconscious one, from which to draw. That glacier is only waiting for our ‘Go!’”

Now, that person had lived in the mountains and had a wide experience of mountains, glaciers, streams. At first, she was puzzled; she brooded over something totally private in her mind and, really, for me it was not important to understand that, at that moment.

Then she interrupted that embarrassment and said: “So, you could count up to three…” There are moments in which, unless you become a child and let your ‘I’ communicate with that of the client…you can suddenly lose everything! I answered straight away: “Yes, of course…as long as you’re the one to say ‘Go!’”
Sometimes you need to let usual, every-day things become a bit uncomfortable…until you’re even scared of them.
But that way, it’s like trying to make a stream run up-hill! I prefer to believe in the gravity we live in and to follow it!

Whitout Fear -Toquinho, Vinicio De Moraes, Sergio Bardotti

Ma come fai quando tu sei bambino/ A prendere coraggio e fede nel destino/ Se papà ti mette per castigo al buio poi di notte a letto/ Zitto che c’è il lupo zitto che c’è il lupo zitto che c’è il lupo/ E la mamma dice chiamo l’uomo nero/ Chiamo il bau bau ti mangia tutto intero/ Nella notte scura ti fa la puntura, ti fa la puntura, ti fa la puntura/ Ma passa per il buio senza paura
Poi all’improvviso ti arriva l’età di amare follemente/ Un uomo che non va non c’è via d’uscita nè di qua nè di là/ Tuo padre guiderà tua madre pregherà/ Tua madre pregherà tua madre pregherà/ L’amante poi si butta giù dal fabbricato/ Perchè quello che è facile diventa complicato/ Dato che la vita è dura, che la vita è dura, che la vita è dura/ Ma passa per l’amore senza paura
Il pericolo c’è fa parte del gioco tu non farci caso sennò vivi poco/ Tieni sempre duro comincia di nuovo comincia di nuovo comincia di nuovo/ Anche per la strada tu stai rischiando/ Stai sovrappensiero stai rimugginando/ Passa la vettura della spazzatura/ Ed il conducente aumenta l’andatura/ Aumenta l’andatura, aumenta l’andatura/ Ma vai per la tua strada senza paura
Ed un bel giorno di qualunque settimana/ Ed un bel giorno di qualunque settimana battono alla porta/ Battono alla porta è un telegramma lei ti sta chiamando/ È un telegramma lei ti sta chiamando/ Per uno viene presto per l’altro tardi comunque presto o tardi/ Tranquilla e sicura viene senza avviso viene e ti cattura/Viene e ti cattura, viene e ti cattura/ Ma passa per la morte senza paura
Ma passa per il buio senza paura/ Ma passa per l’amore senza paura/ Ma vai per la tua via senza paura/ Ma passa per la morte senza paura

Musica: "Senza Paura", di Toquinho,Vinicius de Moraes e Sergio Bardotti, 1976
Drawing: "Composizione Black & White Composition, Blue Coscience", Andrea G., 2008