An introduction to tonights session - drama and wellbeing

Finally Konnektiv is starting workshops again, after a good long and well needed rest for the summer.  With the exception of a few of us getting together for a fire juggling show, which didn't get onto the blog, but has pics etc on the Facebook group so you can see them there if you want.

This evening will be an introductory session, and a statement that there will be no performance focussed workshops until at least after Christmas.  Instead, we will be focussing on the more process based wellbeing workshops that were our original reason to be.

My intention is to introduce the ideas that I think are some of the fundamental tenets of dramatherapy - I want to do a little chart here but not sure how.  Basically, the three areas are physical, emotional and social.  All three are strongly interlinked and improvements in wellbeing in one area may also result in improvements in another.  In each of these areas, we may through drama gain improvements in awareness and ownership, integration and communication.  Through drama we may discover, experience and learn to be able to share (both in terms of giving and taking) ourselves and our companions.

On the diagram, the body represents the physical aspects of our work,(what we are) the pictures inside the body represent the emotional aspects (what we contain) and the arrows represent the social aspects (what we share)

Over the next few weeks we are going to look at all of these things, and in addition, focus on the idea of the metaphoric deaths and rebirths that we experience within our lifespan.  These occur through times of loss and of building - a new project begins, a dear friend dies, we reach a certain age, we leave school, retire, buy a house...  each of these experiences can be assimilated with more or less difficulty depending on our own levels of personal awareness, ownership, integration and communication.

What we will be using to examine these themes will be the tools that the various schools of theatre and drama offer, and thus we will be training our dramatic selves.  Because of this, the sessions will be very useful for people who want workshops in drama, wellbeing, or both.