Play! Using Drama to Explore Your Inner Characters.

By Amanda Jack

The drama that goes on between subpersonalities can be a fertile source of creative work, and enacting those dramas can be a powerful tool for psychosynthesis.  In this workshop we will explore both possibilities.

In creating this workshop I was interested in exploring the possibilities that arise when you combine two very powerful ways of constructing the world, drama and psychosynthesis, and to see how they each could influence the other.   I was curious to see how drama, seen from a psychosynthesis perspective, might be used for healing, and curious also about what psychosynthesis could bring to the creative process in drama as an art form.

For this workshop I had in mind four components of drama that I thought could link to psychosynthesis principles.  First, playing a character, which can have a powerful effect on you as an actor, and somehow expands your own experience of yourself and allows you to see and stretch into more.   Second, the sacred space of the drama – the stage – also creates a place where extraordinary things are allowed to happen, where we suspend our disbelief, and where we are safe to play with fantasy.  Third, the director, who works and reworks the drama, and functions as a leader who can stand back from the action and make changes to improve the drama.  And finally, the audience, the entity that observes the drama, is invited into the theatre, and permitted to witness and be moved by the drama in an environment where there is an unspoken understanding that what happens on stage is not real life, and yet the links to real life are strong and undeniable. 

I see psychosynthesis relating to these four components in the following ways: The stretching into “more” that the actor experiences relates to the concept of self-realization, where learning to identify and dis-identify with parts of yourself are steps along that path to self-realization.   The stage, and the space in which the drama takes place, could be likened to the empathic holding environment, which is so vital to any good therapeutic practice.   I think of the director of a drama as the “I”, which is pure awareness and will.  The director both sees the action and has command over how it will take place on stage.  The “I”/director has a direct link to the higher Self, and is able to see and assist what is trying to emerge.  The audience also has an “I” role to play, since it is the audience, as well as the director, who is aware and observing.  Sometimes, the audience will also be encouraged to be a directing agent in the process and to exercise will.

In addition to looking at psychosynthesis through the language and ideas used in drama, we can look at drama in light of other psychosynthesis principles.  The six psychological functions, thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition, impulse/desire and imagination, are important to the making of successful drama.   The director, the actors and the audience all use them, individually and collectively.  Subpersonalities are the characters in the drama.  Each has it’s own needs and agendas, its own strengths and weaknesses, but none are able to see the entire drama.  They are all an integral part of the whole, but they need the director (and sometimes the observing audience) to bring the drama to completeness.  And just as in psychosynthesis we speak of the person being more than the sum of his/her parts, the drama is more than the sum of its characters.  An idea from Play Therapy that I found useful was that all participants in the group are simultaneously director, audience and actor.  This idea has even more power when seen in conjunction with the observations that I have already made above.

So, with these types of ideas in mind, I asked each person in the group to think about one of their own personal dramas.  I gave the following guidelines:

It could be a drama that occurs in real life.

It could be in the past, present or future.

It could take place between you and other people in your life.

It could be internal, taking place between your sub personalities.

What characters are involved in the drama? Look at each character in turn, and ask:  What does this character look like?  What does s/he like and dislike.  What does s/he want?  How does s/he move?  What is his/her dominant psychological function? What does this character often say?  etc.

In the first exercise, I chose a member of the group to share her drama with the group. She was also given the role of director.   She first described her characters, which were all sub-personalities (“subs”): a playful child, a victim child, the Driver, and her Most Mature Sub-Personality (MMSP).  I chose other members of the group to act out these characters. The rest of the group took the role of audience.  Our director then described a situation, where she was about to give a speech to a huge audience, and the actors improvised a short skit. 

The skit was very funny to watch and looked like complete chaos, but it demonstrated very clearly how chaotic and busy our mind can be when subs are in control. We noticed that even when all subs were given free reign of the stage, only two were really dominant. 

I then invited the director and the audience to suggest changes that they thought were necessary to bring the skit to some kind of order (keeping in mind that while we may be moving to some sort of conclusion, this may not occur).  It was decided that MMSP needed to take better control.  MMSP, with good, strong and skilful will, invited each remaining sub in turn to present part of the speech.  In a very short time a flowing piece had been created.  Each sub performed his or her soliloquy without having to compete for a piece of center stage.

The next member of the group shared a slice of real life.  He gave a very vivid description of his mother before she died.  He described the roles that he and his wife played in caring for her before her death.  I chose actors to play him, his wife and his mother.  He took the director role. 

Again, the first time the skit was played, it was funny and disturbing.  I found that although I knew we were dealing with a potentially painful and sad situation, my first urge was to laugh.  This makes me think that humor can play a very important role in dis-identification, and it is something that I would like to explore more.

The director seemed very present to the situation, and he asked each character in turn to state in only a few words what they needed from the situation, and then to express this with a gesture.  As each actor did this, what had first been a comic display transformed into a very moving and powerful good-bye scene. 

Another useful moment during the exercise was when an actor in the group asked the director what he needed at that moment after the scene had been re-played; this showed the importance of checking in regularly during an exercise like this one, and was also a good embodiment of the Play Therapy principle mentioned above that all participants in such a group are simultaneously director, audience and actor. 

Participants noted that it was interesting to see your own story played out before you.  One member said it was like pillow work (using pillows to represent sub-personalities in identification and dis-identification work), only completely outside you.  The workshop demonstrated to me that the combination of drama and psychosynthesis can be very powerful, not only for the person whose drama is being played out, but also for every other member of the group, whatever their role may be.  

I felt that this workshop was potentially just a beginning in what could be a very rich vein of work.  On this occasion, in order to save time, I chose the actors to play each role myself.  It could be otherwise, however; the director could do this herself, for example, or actors could be invited to join a scene whenever they felt inspired to.  The director herself could play each role in turn.  The person who introduces the drama could exclusively take an audience role, and allow their drama to unfold before them to see what it would show them.  The variations on how to play and then re-work each drama are limitless.  All in all, it seems, the combination of “play” and psychosynthesis holds great promise, and I am looking forward to exploring it further.