This report examines a two-day drama therapy session, Passeggiate serene: Dialogo Silenzioso con la Terra , held during 25–26 May 2024 in Parco Increa and Bosco del Fontanone, Italy. The project was conducted with Legambiente and funded by Parchi Locali di Interesse Sovracomunale with participants aged 10–80, including a dog and a new-born baby. Participants engaged in non-verbal communication and sensory immersion in nature in sessions designed to foster self-expression and self-observation, while addressing emotional distress related to climate change.

Review of: Drama therapy, improvisation and theatre devising for social change in Ta’ Sakena , directed by Nada Sabet, British Council, Cairo, December 2017

Research shows that activists as a population may be at high risk for developing symptoms of trauma, isolation, alienation and burnout due to a host of internal and external factors. This instrumental case study, originally undertaken in the context of a graduate research project, describes a ten-week intervention with a group of female social and environmental activists exploring the theme of self-care. The interventions were based on the integration of two frameworks: drama therapy methods and processes – including Jones’s core processes, Salas’s Playback Theatre, Emunah’s Five Phase Model of drama therapy and Silverman’s Story Within model – and an ecopsychological group process developed by Joanna Macy and her colleagues, known as the Work that Reconnects. Interventions are described and analysed in terms of the integration of methods and the development of self-care as a guiding theme. The study draws larger implications for activist self-care practice, including the role of honouring painful feelings as integral to self-care, and the potential for drama therapy to foster collective practices of self-care within activist movements. The study suggests that drama therapists may have a unique role to play in supporting activists to find tools to engage sustainably in their work. By integrating the Work that Reconnects and drama therapy methods, this research proposes an ecodramatherapy: a drama therapy practice that is rooted in the anticolonial perception of our fundamental relatedness with, and responsibility to, all peoples and forms of life. It is our hope that the lessons from this research, done over a decade ago now, may inspire therapists, facilitators and activists alike to create circles of safety and support for those engaging in the demanding work of fighting for climate justice for present and future generations.

Psychedelics are naturally derived from plants, fungi and bacteria and their experiential therapeutic use evidences improved environmental appreciation. Drama therapy also builds insight through action-oriented treatment interventions that cultivate empathy. This theoretical article proposes possible benefits in pairing drama therapy with psychedelic-assisted therapy to enhance outcomes due to potential commonalities in the process. A drama therapy core processes schema was employed as a baseline to highlight intersections and suggest meaningful intermodal collaboration.

In March 2023, nineteen students, educators and clinicians affiliated with New York University’s theatre education, dance education and drama therapy programs travelled to Rio de Janeiro for ten days to learn about the work of Escola de Teatro Popular (ETP) or The Popular Theatre School across social movements. Co-founded by Julian Boal and collaborator Geo Britto, ETP has reworked the original contributions of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre into a new model of allyship. The co-authors of this article, four drama therapists working across healthcare systems in New York City, seek to examine how ETP’s art-infused allyship with communities relates to therapeutic practice in drama therapy and how it can further the World Health Organization’s global efforts of using the arts to improve community well-being. The article explains how this evolved approach can be a model to build new strengths and new forms of solidarity to confront the contradictory forces that compel drama therapists to submit and resist inadequacies within managed care systems.

Refugees are a growing critical clinical population globally. There is a need for more research and discussion on how drama therapy can be used with refugees, particularly as many interventions will take place in the country of re-settlement where the therapist and client may come from different cultural backgrounds. This clinical commentary discusses the author’s experience of cross-cultural encounter in Developmental Transformations (DvT) individual session with refugee children ages 8–13, and the drama therapist’s embodied experience of cultural difference that emerged within the DvT session. The clinical commentary includes a fictionalized vignette of a DvT play session with a refugee child from Afghanistan, as well as vignettes from the author’s own supervisory DvT sessions.

Review of: PARADE: Celebrating Community in Action Washington Square Park, New York, 7 May 2023

The article reflects on the use of story and poetry as tools that facilitated a conversation related to uncomfortable historical conversations. It uses the performance of Krotoa, Eva van die Kaap as a starting point for unpacking the ways in which the play functioned as an extension of a drama therapy process on conversations about historical trauma. The Groote Kerk served as a symbolic meeting place as well as a way of thinking about therapeutic spaces for reparative dialogues.

This article analyses a structured approach to facilitating Shakespeare groups in prison that interweaves a trauma-informed lens with four critical principles developed by Marin Shakespeare Company. The CREW principles are (1) Connection, (2) Reflection, (3) Expression and (4) Witnessing. We describe the work we have been doing for sixteen years with Marin Shakespeare Company facilitating Shakespeare classes and performances in various California prisons with incarcerated men, women and trans-women. Throughout the article, a blend of theory, guiding quotes and case examples from participants is used to demonstrate how the study and performance of Shakespeare in prison, when rooted in a trauma-informed lens and supported by the four principles mentioned above, is helpful in healing trauma and fostering social and emotional well-being amongst individuals who are incarcerated.