Partnerships in Play

Partnerships in Play

Exploring Awareness in Relationships through Psychodrama and Physical Theatre

Welcome to a highly experiential and playful group of personal development in which the Psychodrama Approach and Physical Theatre will dance together to provide a unique experience of emotional awareness and embodied spontaneity.

The focus of the group will be on relationships and partnerships.

Both individuals and couples are welcome, as well as anyone wishing to explore a partnership in their life (friends, work colleagues, family members…).

When two people/individuals engage with each other, they are well more than two! 

The psychodrama approach sees relationships as a fascinating field of human interactions in which a variety of roles are engaged, each of them manifesting different desires and needs, complicity and conflicts, potentials, dilemmas, values and dreams. 

The language of theatre allows these roles to be explored in a playful and embodied way, facilitating insights and awareness, personal process and further understanding of the nature of the relationship. The play of these roles reveal their fundamental vital drives as well as their unique wisdom, providing precious insights in the process of exploration, amplification and integration of the amazing theatre of our Psyche.

When two people interact many roles appear; some of them are welcome, others might be more difficult, at the point of remaining in the background, hiding from awareness. In Psychodrama the person is encouraged to bring these roles into the light and explore them through play.

The amplification and play of the different roles often bring humor into the personal process. Playing a problematic role of our personality deepens the somatic experience, sometimes bringing the role to its grotesque nature, when we can fully realize the depth and intensity of their urgencies as well as their intrinsic paradoxes. With the support of the protagonist of the Psychodrama can play the various roles of their personality in the interpersonal field and witness the inner drama of their psyche, which can be seen and transposed through the lenses of the theatre genres. Tragedy, Melodrama, Satyre, Absurd and, very often, Comedy! 

Welcome to the theatre of relationships!

The workshop is open to anyone wishing to engage in a quest of personal awareness and emotional awakening through role playing and theatrical games, within the context of a psychodrama group.

This workshop is specifically designed for anyone interested in exploring their psychological field in an embodied and theatrical way, in which the body and its language comes first, before words. 

• Theatre practitioners who are interested in a therapeutic process that includes play and theatricality, and that can be as deeply healing as fundamentally fun.
• Teachers, educators, therapists, psychotherapists, psychodramatists, drama-therapists and any one active in the field of healing who is interested in exploring psychology using a theatrical paradigm based on embodiment, play and fun.
• Individuals who are already engaged in any theatrical or therapeutic process.
• Couples, colleagues, team or family members who wish to explore their relationship patterns.

If you are coming from the field of theatre arts, you can expect to practice a therapeutic process constantly fed by the dynamics and techniques of physical theatre and embodied play.

If you are coming from the psychological field you can expect to explore emotional processes and wounds through theatrical games, exercise and the creation of characters, both in collective movement practice and through improvisation.

A fierce and playful curiosity about human folly and beauty is required, as well as a passionate engagement to the exploration of one’s own emotional life in an artistic way.

Though no previous specific knowledge of Psychodrama and Physical Theatre are required, a previous experience in Personal Development/Therapy OR in Theatre is necessary. 

The Approach

The pedagogical approach integrates the practice and the experience of the two facilitators.

Psychodrama proposes a journey of emotional awareness and creative transformation of one’s own psychic structure, roles and relationships through the re-enactment of inner and outer life scenarios. In this sense it is a highly theatrical therapeutic practice, in which the person stages (enacts) a scenario of their life using the group both as cast (auxiliaries) and as audience of the play. If you wish to know more about Psychodrama you can visit www.zso.fi/psychodrama

Physical Theatre provides a set of exercises, games and playful techniques that supports the embodiment of the different roles, thus encouraging a deeper experience of the process. The result is a deep artistic and emotional work, involving the body in a dynamic of play, spontaneity.
Theatre artists will discover a fun way to work on themselves with psychological depth and theatrical delight.