Bibliographic reference
Shoshi Keisari (2021). Expanding the Role Reportoire Whille Aging: A Drama Therapy Model. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 635975.
Abstract
The article by researcher Shoshi Keisari provides a conceptual analysis that aims to develop an integrative model of drama therapy, based on her working team’s field experience with elderly participants. This new model of drama therapy is the result of four studies conducted by her between 2017 and 2020. It aims at fostering personal emotional growth through the guided practice of specific theatrical approaches, which mix personal narrative and group stage improvisation.
Context
Drama therapy is a widely recognized expressive therapeutic practice that consists of exploring individual life stories through group theatrical improvisation. Two macro approaches can be distinguished: so-called playback theater and life-crossroads stories. The former is perhaps the most common form of drama therapy in which a group of actors create an improvisation of actions and dialogues in response to a personal story. In each session, participants take turns as storytellers, actors and spectators. The latter approach has many elements in common with playback theater and consists of a particular form of dramatic expression focused on significant past life memories, turning points, and relevant life-changing events. Keisari suggests integrating the two approaches into a model that can be used with various kinds of participants. In fact, the aim of drama therapy techniques is to bring out the crucial events of one’s past, both distant and recent, and relive them together with the group from various points of view, i.e. as narrator, actor and spectator. The performance combined with the shared group experience represent a creative therapeutic tool. It allows storytellers to distance themselves from their own memories and, at the same time, see them more closely and relive them in a transfigured and incredibly more tangible way. Such psychological distancing makes it easier to give meaning to those events, which are not necessarily negative and traumatic ones. These events are then reacquired, reinterpreted, revived and reintegrated into the individual’s current personal identity, with tangible effects on self-esteem, self-acceptance and openness to the future. “Experience, expression, engagement” are key words of Keisari’s drama therapy model, which explicitly refers to Connie Corley’s (2010) work on transforming trauma through the visual arts by three elderly female Holocaust survivors.
Characteristics
The conceptual analysis discusses and combines the results of four studies conducted by Keisari and collaborators, of which two are quantitative research (Keisari and Palgi 2017; Keisari et al. 2020b) and two are qualitative (Keisari et al. 2018, 2020a). The latter two show how dramatic improvisation transformed the protagonist’s memories of turning points into vividly relived experiences through the active engagement of the whole group of participants. Staging some of the significant moments of one’s life (i.e. the key moments in which choices were made that consequently conditioned the rest of one’s existence, or in which turning points occurred) allowed the narrator to explore the embodied role (social, familiar, relational) and reconfigure and redefine that role, also in the light of their later life events. This is a fundamental point of the integrative drama therapy model proposed by Keisari: staging life roles becomes a non-traumatic channel of exploration to relive important situations from an emotional and existential point of view. Seeing oneself again on the group stage, through defined roles (as mother, son, father, brother, coworker), helps redefine one’s identity and integrate possibly disturbing past events into one’s autobiography, consequently contributing to a better self-acceptance. For this reason, Keisari suggests that these transformative phenomenological processes may serve as potential therapeutic support for certain psychopathologies, such as depression. We must add, however, that further studies focusing specifically on patients suffering from such pathologies need to be conducted. Such studies could possibly involve special sessions with drama therapists focused on the relationships with such patients. The two quantitative studies used mental health indices in a large randomized sample of participants. That said, the participants, only some of whom had past theatrical experience, were not clinical subjects.
Outcomes
The combined results of the four studies show that the participants underwent a significant transformation process in a relatively short time. Increased self-esteem, satisfaction, and a feeling of well-being continued weeks after the end of the sessions. The new form of life-review playback theater can, therefore, represent a drama therapy intervention with high therapeutic potential for the elderly population, capable of enriching their lives with gratifying social stimuli and unexpected creative expression.
Limitations
There are several limitations. These do not relate so much to the conceptual analysis itself, but to the four reference studies. In this sense, the paper has the merit of discussing the methodological shortcomings of some of the data collection and the structural limitations of the drama therapy sessions. For example, the brevity of the sessions prevented the full development of some life stories as well as the number of salient autobiographical episodes staged. The most significant limitation was not including participants with clinical depression, as already mentioned, which had the potential to possibly reinforce the described therapeutic effects.
Perspectives
Outside of the potential application of Keisari’s model, an increasing number of studies in the field of mental health show that the use of drama therapy in the aging population can help overcome social isolation and decrease the feeling of uselessness and lack of esteem afflicting the elderly. Following this creative framework, performed both for oneself and others, can reveal unexpected forms of expression and allow individuals to rediscover a sense of community, belong to a group in which they are seen and recognized, and find pleasure in social engagement.
Edited by Emiliano Loria
