Drama Therapy and Embracing our Roles Post-Pandemic
by: Victoria Mancini, CAT
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…” Shakespeare
As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, from our hibernation, we face yet again another transition. Many of us have begun to evaluate how the past year and a half has changed how we view ourselves. As a Creative Arts Therapist, I often utilize drama therapy techniques to help client’s explore aspects of the self and create a clearer vision of a healthier self through role playing, storytelling and role creation. “Drama therapy is the intentional use of drama and/or theater processes to achieve therapeutic goals. This approach can provide context for participants to tell their stories, set goals and solve problems, express feeling or achieve catharsis” (2021). Drama therapist pioneer, Robert Landy, created the foundation of Role Theory (a modality within drama therapy) on the notion that an individual human experience is constructed of many individual roles making up the entire person (Malchiodi 2005).
These roles are defined by specific patterns of behavior, including thinking, feeling and acting. We all have roles that we play. Each individual person has a very unique make-up of roles; some are more “leading”, while others are more “supporting”. Roles can be based on classic Jungian archetypes or your own creation, and they can overlap in any number of ways. Jungian Archetypes were defined by Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and contemporary of Freud, who believed that there are images and themes, which are universally shared by individuals across cultures that may show up in dreams, literature, art or religion (Mcleod 2018). Here are some examples of Jungian archetypes often used in my drama therapy practice: the explorer, the ruler, the creator, the caregiver, the magician, the hero, the rebel, the lover, the jester, and the orphan just to name a few (2021).
All of our roles intend to be of good service to us, at least at some point they did – sometimes the message can become misconstrued and the role may seem to be to our detriment. I would encourage you not to push these roles away, but instead care for that role as if it were a young child. Why did it appear in the first place? What does this role need to feel safe, supported and understood? If life is about transformations and many times these roles appear involuntarily, I would like to inspire you to embrace the idea that you can also consciously mold roles to meet your goals and the vision of who you would like to be. A role that could have involuntarily emerged during the pandemic is ‘the hermit’.
We were given no choice but to stay indoors and feared socializing outside of family or pods. This served us as we stayed safe and healthy away from the virus. We may have also taken on the role of ‘the caregiver’ in conjunction with ‘the hermit’, as we home schooled our children and experimented with baking homemade bread for the first time. But now that things are opening up, we are being asked to shed the role of ‘the hermit’ and become ‘the social butterfly’ again. There is a large contrast between these roles and it can feel exhausting to jump from one to the other. With this example in mind I would encourage my hypothetical client not to forget what they cherished and learned from becoming ‘the hermit’ – perhaps more self-care to recharge and quality time with family. I would also point out that the role of ‘the social butterfly’ does not need to be as active as before, but instead a balance can be found between ‘the hermit’ and ‘the social butterfly’ to ease the transition and grow a stronger sense of self.
As we transition back to a world post COVID, we are again asked to reconsider our roles. I’d encourage you to consider which roles did you play before the pandemic and how they shifted during it. Then contemplate which are more fulfilling than expected or which made you feel healthy or unhealthy, with or without them. This can be valuable information about your happiness moving forward. Awareness signals that you are one step closer to making meaningful changes; if you know what you don’t want, you can have a better understanding of what you do want. Some roles we created to protect ourselves from the treacherous year of the unknown we just emerged from. Perhaps not all of these qualities will serve us moving forward, or maybe they were once unimaginable and now welcome blessings to take on. The beauty of this role theory is that you are the writer and can mix, match and create ones to better suit yourself. If this year has taught us anything it is how resilient and flexible we truly are as human beings. I hope to empower you to feel a greater sense of autonomy over the balance of which roles are leading and supporting in your life. Life is about transformation and our roles are ever evolving.
References:
The 12 Jungian Archetypes. Exploring your mind. (2020, April 15). https://exploringyourmind.com/twelve-jungian-archetypes/.
Malchiodi, C. A. (2005). Drama Therapy and Psychodrama. In Expressive therapies. essay, Guilford Press.
Mcleod, S. (2018). Carl Jung. Carl Jung | Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.html.
Shakespeare, W., Thompson, A., & Kastan, D. S. (2010). Arden Shakespeare Complete Works. A & C Black.
What is Drama Therapy? North American Drama Therapy Association. (2021). https://www.nadta.org/.
