{"id":215,"date":"2011-02-01T15:08:29","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T23:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=215"},"modified":"2011-02-01T15:08:29","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01T23:08:29","slug":"what-is-applied-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"What is Applied Theatre?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an emerging field, a sub-set of the theatre arts, that differs from ordinary theatre in that it\u2019s not done just for entertainment. It\u2019s used for education, social action, community-building, recreation, personal development, therapy and rehabilitation, business, religion, and so forth. It\u2019s been emerging for a few decades, but most modern books on theatre don\u2019t recognize its existence. I edited an anthology, sort of an overview, in 2007: Interactive & Improvisational Drama: Varieties of Applied Theatre and Performance<\/a>. Check out its table of contents. <\/p>\n

I am interested in your feedback about which endeavors should and should not be included under this umbrella. One department chairman who supports applied theatre says that it should primarily be fictional, and the true details of a person\u2019s life make it too much like therapy. Theatre should not be therapy. I\u2019m encouraging him to give me more reasons. The problem is, first, theatre may not be therapy per se, in the sense of people in the sick role use the method to relieve their disease, but it is undoubtedly therapeutic, in the sense of offering a kind of catharsis that even Aristotle noted. (My explanation for catharsis is the bringing up from the subconscious levels parts of the psyche that had been split off. Seeing a play or movie that touches a chord to some extent does this: There are the emotions of laughter or tears, feelings of indignation or fear, that go with sensing resonances with one\u2019s own deeper and blocked feelings.) <\/p>\n

There are other aspects that haven\u2019t been worked out. While by no means restricting my own thinking about this approach to methods that require a fair degree of improvisation or interactivity \u2014which I confess are of more interest to me\u2014 I do include fuzzy-boundary issues, such as devised theatre (where groups put together a scripted performance that captures the issues associated with their demographic, such as being an immigrant, in the role of one who is considered mentally ill, or any other sub-group). <\/p>\n

I suspect that applied theatre or applied drama (is there a difference?) may yet become a significant part of theatre arts. I\u2019d like to see the topic be part of the main curriculum of theatre arts in high school\u2014at least a 2-week unit on it in beginning drama!\u2014or in college. For upper division students and\/or elective lower division college students, I imagine such a course, using my text or one of the other (there aren\u2019t many\u2014which ones do you recommend?) as a basic resource for getting oriented. This whole thing overlaps with more I\u2019ll be saying about sociodrama as a core method for learning in college<\/a>, too\u2014as noted in an article on my other website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an emerging field, a sub-set of the theatre arts, that differs from ordinary theatre in that it\u2019s not done just for entertainment. It\u2019s used for education, social action, community-building, recreation, personal development, therapy and rehabilitation, business, religion, and so forth. It\u2019s been emerging for a few decades, but most modern books on theatre don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-psychodrama","category-literacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}