Drama Therapy

Response/Ability: Imagining a Critical Race Feminist Paradigm for the Creative Arts Therapies

by Nisha Sajnani

Published (in press) in the Arts in Psychotherapy: Special Issue on the Creative Arts Therapies and Social Justice.

Book Review: S. Jennings, Editor, Dramatherapy and Social Theatre: Necessary Dialogues, Routledge, UK, USA (2009), p. 245.

by Nisha Sajnani

Theatre of the Oppressed: Drama Therapy as Cultural Dialogue

by Nisha Sajnani

Published in Current Approaches to Drama Therapy (Johnson and Emunah, Eds.). 2009

Creating Safer Spaces for Immigrant Women of Colour: Performing the Politics of Possibility

by Nisha Sajnani

Published in Canadian Women's Studies. 2006

The dynamics of play in Developmental Transformations drama therapy sessions: A discoveryoriented psychotherapy process study to generate hypotheses about a possible relationship between therapeutic play and violent behavior

by Fred Landers

Ph.D. dissertation, Clinical Psychology

In this discovery-oriented psychotherapy research study, hypotheses on the nature of therapeutic play in Developmental... more In this discovery-oriented psychotherapy research study, hypotheses on the nature of therapeutic play in Developmental Transformations drama therapy sessions, and the possible relationship between this therapeutic play and violent behavior, are generated through the application of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of deterritorialization to the analysis of three videotaped sessions from a single case. Developmental Transformations is a form of drama therapy in which client and therapist improvise scenes together incorporating movements, sounds, pretend objects, and roles. One of the hypotheses generated by the study is that interruptions in the repetition of patterns of play, whether initiated by the client or the therapist, may enhance the therapeutic relationship by approaching, but not exceeding, the client and therapist's unique threshold at the boundary of their mutual agreement to engage in play behavior together. Another hypothesis is that the resulting alternation between repetition and transformation of patterns of play during sessions may act as an essential ingredient that has the potential to deter violent behavior, which would hypothetically lack this alternation. This study may contribute hypotheses for later testing in studies of a possible deterrent effect of therapeutic play on violent behavior. -

Dismantling violent forms of masculinity through Developmental Transformations

by Fred Landers

Urban Play: Imaginatively Responsible Behavior as an Alternative to Neoliberalism

by Fred Landers

(forthcoming), Arts in Psychotherapy. This draft submitted on June 7, 2011. Small edits made on October 15, 2011.

Urban Play is a budding form of social activism in which groups of friends engage in improvised play with each other... more Urban Play is a budding form of social activism in which groups of friends engage in improvised play with each other and with strangers in public places. This work may contribute to social justice by helping participants discover opportunities for change. If neoliberalism encourages the pursuit of narrowly defined self-interests, neoliberal institutions may be maintained by the fear that these interests are threatened. By allowing participants to define the actions that are uniquely possible among them, play appears to offer an alternative to neoliberalism. What has been learned so far from playing in public also suggests a fresh perspective on Developmental Transformations, the form of drama therapy that inspired Urban Play.