It’s late on a Friday night in early spring and the audience at the Provincetown Playhouse has long since emptied the renovated theatre. Standing in front of the theatre on MacDougal Street, a friendly voice brings me to my senses.
‘Hey, Robert, what’s up?'
It’s an old friend, with whom I acted during the heyday of experimental theatre. She played Gogo to my Didi in Waiting for Godot.
‘Hey. You caught me deep in thought.’
‘You wanna stay there?’
I really did, but I was trapped: ‘It’s ok. I just came out of the theatre.’
Sensing a long, unwanted conversation, I did my best to graciously upstage my interloper’s questions. ‘We did a one-act festival around the theme of The Fading Body. We call it therapeutic theatre.'
‘We?’
‘Yeah. The drama therapy community.’
‘That’s not me. You gonna tell me what it is?’
‘Therapeutic theatre?’
‘Therapeutic theatre.’
‘It’s, you know, it’s…a performance, a text, you know, a theme.
‘So it’s theatre.’
‘Yes. But with a difference.’
‘Yeah…’
‘I gotta go.’
‘Where you going?’
‘Home.’
‘Running away from answering my questions?’
‘It’s been a long day.’
‘So give me the short answer.’
‘OK. For starters, it’s theatre—actors, audience, director, text, props, set, lights, costumes--the works. The difference is the intention.’
‘Of who?’
‘Everybody. Even the audience.’
‘What does a regular theatre audience intend?’
‘I don’t know, they want to be entertained, distracted, moved, enlightened, provoked.’
‘They want something different in therapeutic theatre?’
‘No. Yes. They want to learn something.’
‘You mean it’s didactic? Sounds like fun.’
‘No, not didactic, not really. More like they want to become more aware of certain issues like aging, racism, illness, difference, oppression—you know, things that fade, things that blossom.’
‘And so they go to the theatre?’
‘Yes, to therapeutic theatre.’
‘Where does the therapy come in?’
‘Come in?’
‘Knock knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Therapeutic theatre.’
‘Therapeutic theatre who?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Alright. Here goes. It’s about healing.’
‘Oh, now I understand.’
‘No, really. Let me explain.’
‘Good luck.’
‘By healing I mean it’s about change.’
‘Thanks for clearing it all up.’
‘Stay with me.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until you finish muddling through this.’
‘The idea is to engage in a process of making a play around a central issue, like the fading body, and performing the play to an audience and then engaging with the audience in some form of dialogue.’
‘You like the word engage.’
‘Yes. It’s about relationship. That’s where the change happens.’
‘Where?’
‘In the relationship. When the process works, the actors discover ways to engage more deeply with the theme. Their relationship, for example, to the fading body deepens, shifts, changes. Because the process is therapeutic, directors engage in special ways with the actors. They think like therapists, in fact, they are therapists. They consider aspects of resistance, distance and catharsis, help work through difficult moments of impasse and crisis, draw upon play and spontaneity, encourage dialogue, maintain clear boundaries in terms of roles and relationships. They do this as the actors engage with the text in role and interact with each other out of role.’
‘Engage, engage, engage. What about the play itself?’
‘Well, for The Fading Body, all the brief one-acts were original, created for this performance. Students in the NYU Drama Therapy Program came up with ideas, which they ran by the producer. The producer linked them up with playwrights who crafted a text. The producer cast each play with members of the professional drama therapy community, all of whom are both clinicians and performers.’
‘Therapists can act?’
‘Drama therapists need to. It’s in their bones. You know, the only thing that really distinguishes drama therapists from the hundreds of other forms of psychotherapy is their grounding in the art form. We give them the opportunity to act. And for the most part, that makes them happy.’
‘So therapeutic theatre is for unhappy drama therapists frustrated because they can’t make a living as actors?’
‘No, no, no.’
‘Lighten up, Landy.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘First tell me more about the healing of the actors.’
‘You never know what will happen on stage. There’s this moment of terror, you know, because you’re out there all alone, standing at the edge of the abyss and summoning up all your courage not to jump, thinking about failure and rejection. And somehow in the face of this impending death, you let it all go and just listen and respond, as if for the first time. And miraculously, you come back to life and the body blossoms.’
‘I can relate. It’s just theatre.’
‘Right, but in therapeutic theatre, those moments are heightened, brought to awareness, reflected upon. For the therapeutic theatre actor, performance is healing because it allows the actor to reflect upon the journey from self to other to self and to become aware that such a journey can be transformational. As an actor, the parts of my body that fade and that flourish perform. In recognizing the meaning of the performance, I am changed.’
‘As for me, I was grateful each night just to get through it without going up on my lines. And I loved the rush, the applause, the drinks afterwards. You want a beer?’
‘It’s late.’
‘Alright, one more thing. Tell me about the audience, their healing, and then you can go home.’
‘Let’s call it change.’
‘Right, change.’
‘Well, first of all, the audience is mostly invited, people who are connected in some way to the performers, people who have a distinct interest in the theme, people who are part of the drama therapy community. When the performance is optimal, the audience, too, experiences a greater depth of relationship to the theme, to the performers, to the drama therapy community, to the larger community of people living with fading bodies.’
‘What’s a fading body?’
‘I really gotta go.’
‘You can’t go.’
‘Why not?’
‘We’re waiting for Godot.’
Ah…’
‘Ah, Beckett, now there was a therapeutic theatre.’
‘It passed the time.’
‘A theatre of ritual.’
‘Of playfulness.’
‘Of despair.’
‘Of playfulness.’
‘Is that the same as healing? As change?’
‘Maybe. If it is possible to play with the idea of fading bodies and to feel more present and vital through the playing, I’d call that healing.’
‘But not of the body. Maybe the mind.’
‘Why separate the two?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re finally getting it.’
‘I got it all along. You’re the one lagging behind.’
‘Can I go now?’
'One last question, I promise. So how is therapeutic theatre different from regular theatre?’
‘See you later.’
Living in a world that is not entirely the insular, stark, Beckett-like landscape of the tortured soul, I took my leave. Heading south on MacDougal, passing a light-hearted crowd of young people about the age I was when I last played Estragon, I made a left on Bleecker, eager to rest. Tomorrow was another day with many things to be done.