Today, March 27, 2014, World Theatre Day is celebrated. The creation of this day was an initiative of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) of UNESCO. Its objective is to promote theatre and understand it as part of art and culture.
As a creative process, theatre is an artistic language that, within an appropriate framework, has therapeutic potential. Theatre accompanies and facilitates processes that promote self-knowledge and bio-psycho-social well-being.
Theatre therapy does not seek to create great actors; its importance does not derive from aesthetic results and patients’ dramaturgical skills, but rather the benefits it provides depend on the activity itself and the creative process.
There are many similarities between the role of the psychologist and the actor; both must empathize with the world of the patient or the character. In therapy, it is necessary to enter the patient’s world to better understand their experience and then exit to help them in the healing process. In theatre, the actor does the same: enters the character’s psyche to understand them better and then exits to bring the character to life.
Dramatizing problems helps to recognize them. Art therapists recognize that for the patient, acting as if you were another person makes you believe you are not yourself and you don’t judge yourself, therefore you are freer. At the same time, through improvisation, solutions or alternatives are sought to overcome the difficulties we face.
In this way, theatre therapy is defined as a discipline that develops psychotherapeutic intervention models with the support of theatrical artistic techniques and psychological techniques. It has gained prominence in the last thirty years in Europe and has proven to be a powerful tool in therapeutic, educational, rehabilitative, and social interventions.
It is included within the family of art therapies and has been shown to improve self-esteem and self-concept; it helps with inner self-knowledge; it improves social and/or socialization skills, as well as linguistic and communicative processes; it overcomes shyness and increases personal confidence; its important role in overcoming fears and depressive processes is recognized, as is its improvement of empathy and recognition towards other people. Furthermore, it is an important technique for working on creativity and imagination.
Art therapist Mónica Cury is the technical and theoretical director of ISEP’s Master’s Degree in Artistic and Creative Therapies. In her presentation of the master’s program, she emphasizes that given the growing complexity of socio-economic conflicts that generate inequalities, isolation, and personal suffering, therapeutic approaches, education, and the entire social care framework require more than ever a multidisciplinary intervention that provides a global vision and a comprehensive approach.
Creative therapies: music therapy, art therapy, therapeutic theatre, and dance movement therapy undoubtedly make a significant contribution to multidisciplinary care in all these areas of intervention.