Drama Therapy Exercises

Twelve people stand in a wide circle in the studio. The first person says "Daniel," and as he says it his hands open palm-up at his sides without him meaning to. The room echoes "Daniel" back, twelve hands opening palm-up. Next person: "Mia," with a small bounce on her toes. The group answers, "Mia," twelve small bounces. By the time it goes round, everyone has been named and met, and the room has loosened.

The studio has been cleared. Eight people walk loosely through the space, not going anywhere in particular. The drama therapist says "anxious." The walks change. Shoulders rise. Steps shorten and quicken. People start half-glancing over their shoulders. After a minute the drama therapist says "shake it off, neutral," and bodies loosen again. Then "curious," and the walks slow, lift, lengthen. The room is silent except for footsteps.

Ten people sit in a circle. The drama therapist hands the first person an imaginary apple. He bites it, then passes it on. As it leaves his hand it has become a small bird. The next person lifts it to her ear, listens, then passes it on as a heavy stone. The stone becomes a cup, the cup becomes a baby, the baby becomes a key. By the time the object returns to the start it has been twenty things. The group is laughing.

A group is gathered in a loose circle. One person walks to the centre and starts a low hum, swaying side to side. After a moment another joins her, adding a small clap on the offbeat. A third comes in with a high "ah" and a shoulder lift. By the eighth person the centre has a strange music to it, polyphonic and alive. Nobody has spoken. The drama therapist gradually waves them down and the room empties of sound, leaving everyone slightly out of breath.

A participant has invented a character: a 53-year-old retired postman named Ben who lives alone with a dog. He sits in the chair the drama therapist has set out. The drama therapist asks: where do you live, Ben? What do you worry about at night? Ben answers slowly. He worries the dog will die before he does. He worries no one will notice for a few days. The participant playing Ben does not look up. Halfway through, the room realises Ben's worries are not entirely Ben's.

The group sits in a loose horseshoe. The drama therapist gives the first prompt: "Once upon a time..." The first person: "There was a girl who lived in a tower." Next prompt: "Every day..." Next person: "Every day she watched the road for a horse." "Until one day..." "A horse came, but it had no rider." On it goes around the circle. By "And ever since then..." the group has built a fairy tale none of them planned but all of them recognise. Several people are quiet.

Slips of paper are folded into a soft cloth bag. A pair draws one and reads: "Two siblings clearing out their dead father's shed." They start. One picks up an imaginary wrench, the other an old jacket. Within thirty seconds they have argued and softened twice. The rest of the group sits around the perimeter watching. When the scene ends, the watchers describe what they saw. The players sometimes hear something they hadn't realised they'd put in.

A group of eight stand loosely around the studio. One participant walks to the centre and begins to shape the others. She lifts an arm so it points across the room. She turns a body away from that pointing arm and tilts the head down. She steps back to look. The shape between them, one figure reaching, the other turned away, is something she has been carrying about her parents' marriage for years but never seen from the outside. The sculpted hold their positions. The room is quiet. She stands looking, and her eyes fill.

A man sits in a chair. Across from him, his colleague plays his teenage son. They run a familiar scene: a Sunday morning argument about phone time. After two minutes the drama therapist says "switch." The man stands up, sits in the son's chair, and continues the scene as his son. His colleague now plays him, the father. He hears his own words from the other side. He watches his colleague-as-himself and notices, for the first time, how much he sounds like his own father. The room is very still.

The drama therapist has marked the room: high status against the back wall, low status against the front. A group of twelve are scattered between them. Question: "How much authority do you feel you have at work?" People shift. Some stand by the back wall, some hover near the middle, two move all the way to the front. Next question: "How heard do you feel when you speak in your family?" The same group rearranges itself entirely. Nobody has spoken about their actual situation but everyone has just shown it.

A teenager sits across from her therapist. They have agreed to give Anxiety a name. The teenager calls it The Crow. What does The Crow look like? Wet feathers, beady eyes, sits on her shoulder. How does it move? It hops. Where does it sit when she's at school? Right above her left ear, leaning in. The therapist gestures at the empty chair beside them. "If The Crow were sitting there now, what would you want to say to it?" The teenager looks at the empty chair. She is angry. She starts to speak.

A woman tells a short story to the conductor: she had been meaning to call her sister all week, and finally called this morning, and the conversation was hard but real. The conductor turns to the players: "Let's watch." Three players stand in the centre. They don't repeat her story. One walks slowly across the space holding an imaginary phone. Another stands very still, arms wrapped around herself. The third moves between them, hesitant. After two minutes they end. The teller is crying quietly. "Yes," she says. "That's what it was like."

A man and his therapist. Between them, an empty chair. The man's father died three years ago without them speaking. The therapist asks him to address his father. The man hesitates, then begins: "You never asked." His voice cracks. The therapist invites him after a while to move to the other chair and respond as his father. He sits in the empty chair and does not speak for almost a minute. Then, as his father, he says quietly, "I didn't know how." He moves back to his own seat. The room holds.

A woman sits at a small writing desk. She writes for fifteen minutes without lifting her pen. The letter is to her older brother, who hurt her as a child and whom she has not spoken to in twenty years. When she finishes she reads it aloud to her therapist. The room is quiet. There is no comment, no advice. The therapist asks if she wants to dramatise a moment from the letter, to speak directly to the brother as if he were in the room. She thinks about it. She says yes.

A man directs a scene from his own life: the conversation he never had with his mother before she died. Three group members take supporting roles. One plays his mother. Two play himself at different ages. He places his mother in a chair at the kitchen table and arranges the others around her. The therapist coaches gently. He stands behind them and tells the scene as he wishes it had gone, line by line, until his mother says the words he needed. When it ends he is shaking.

A woman has agreed to write and perform a monologue from the perspective of her younger self at fifteen. She has fifteen minutes to write. When she returns to the centre, she stands and speaks. The voice that comes out is sharper and more cynical than her usual voice. She says things her adult self has been holding back from her for thirty years. The group does not respond. They witness. When she finishes she sits down and breathes for a long time.

At the end of the session, the group stands in a loose circle. Each person turns to the person on their left and offers an imaginary gift. The first man offers his neighbour a small bowl. She receives it without asking what it is. The next person offers an old book. The next, a key. The next, a candle. No one explains. By the time the gifts have gone all the way around, everyone has been seen and given something.

After a long session of role play, the therapist gathers the group. They shake out their bodies, hands, shoulders, legs. Each person says their own first name aloud. Then each says one ordinary thing they are returning to: "I have to pick up my daughter at six." "I have a load of laundry going at home." "Tomorrow is Wednesday." It sounds mundane and the mundanity is the point.

The group has built a doorway in the studio out of two chairs and a long piece of fabric stretched between them. One by one, each person walks through. Before they cross they name something they are leaving behind: "the way I have been talking to myself." On the other side they name something they are taking forward: "more patience with my daughter." Each crossing is witnessed in silence by the rest. Some people stand in the doorway for a long time before they walk through.

At the start of the session, the drama therapist goes around the circle. "Weather inside, today, no analysis." The first person: "Heavy fog, low ceiling." The next: "Bright cold morning." The next: "Thunder, but distant." Twelve weather reports later, the room has a sense of itself. At the end of the session the drama therapist does the same round. The reports have shifted, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Nobody had to explain why.