The use of distance with story-work in dramatherapy has a further benefit however, to providing a safe way for clients to work through their issues. The use of distance can also be used to bring clients closer to their problems, creating more clarity and insight. As story-work allows the client to access their subconscious thoughts through their engagement and connection with the story, ‘paradoxically, the further from real life the story is set, the greater the degree of revelation is possible’ (Dent-Brown, 1999, p. 11). Through the safety of working with a metaphorical story, and the subconscious engagement with the story and its characters, clients can experience their own painful experiences more readily and more deeply than if they were working directly with their own actual story. Often the experiences and reactions of the characters to the problems they face will provide unexpected clarity for the client who is facing the same difficulties.
As metaphorical stories can provide distance for clients, autobiographical story-work can provide under-distancing for clients who are too removed from their understanding of, or feelings for, their difficult issues. Dramatherapy offers a particular way of ‘engaging with life-story…[as]…it encourages a connection with felt experience (which may be expressed as a remembered smell, taste, sound or image) before developing those ‘deep self-experiences’ into narrative representations’ (Redhouse, 2014, p. 77). As a result, the autobiographical story has the potential to allow the client to explore deep, meaningful and intimate moments from their life through the story they write and the parts of their own life-story they want to understand or process further. In using dramatherapy techniques, such as landscapes, puppets and masks, to facilitate clients in exploring parts of their life-story clients can then choose the memories they want to represent in story form, and the theatrical methods they want to use to tell their story. Using a creative medium for clients to tell their autobiographical story is a way to honour and respect their memories, as ‘memory is not entirely rational but performative; memory is a creative and enactive process through which history and identity are rehearsed and constructed’ (Nicholson, 2012, p.69).
As in metaphorical stories, in autobiographical stories clients can also choose to change their narrative and explore other endings or roles they would like to play. This can be very empowering for clients as ‘given insight and awareness, we still have, even in the most interrupted of personal biographies, some power to change, order and ameliorate our lives’ (Taylor, 2000, p. 260). Through story-work clients have the agency to re-author their lives and experience alternative stories, including happier endings, resolutions and the undoing of regrets as ‘through working with a story and its conclusion, a person can put an end to the past and experiences which might remain unfinished’ (Couroucli-Robertson, 1998, p. 9). The act of performing alternative narratives through autobiographical work can create new memories for the client, model a different way to think or behave and strengthen clients with the belief that positive change is possible.
Along with the ability to use under-distancing and alternative endings with autobiographical story-work, it is also a powerful way to enable healing from past trauma. In their article Being Before Doing: Life Story Work for Children with Attachment Difficulties outlining a dramatherapy group run for children and their foster or adopted families, Moore and Peacock found that ‘engaging in the child’s life story in an ‘embodied’ way, not just with ‘thinking’ but using their senses helps reconnect with early un-worded trauma through play and enactment’ (Moore and Peacock, 2007, p. 19). In reconnecting with unspoken trauma through their senses child clients have the opportunity to process the trauma and work through their engagement with it, bringing insight, understanding and eventually healing. For adults who were abused as children their life-story may be quite fractured and their memories hazy or even non-existent. Through embodiment the memories stored in the body can be accessed and brought into the conscious mind, again allowing processing and healing to begin through the story work.
Story-work in dramatherapy is a powerful way of working with clients and is so accessible as all cultures are made up of stories and all clients have their own life-story to tell. Story-work allows for both distancing and under-distancing depending on the needs of the clients, and in this way is a very respectful and client-centred approach. Story also allows clients to find insight through the symbolism and metaphors in stories and through the embodying of characters that releases the memories stored in our own bodies. Story-work is as beneficial for children, adults and seniors alike and can be healing and empowering for clients who work with stories through the skill of a Dramatherapist.
References
Couroucli-Robertson, K. (1998) The Application of Myth and Stories in Dramatherapy, Dramatherapy, 20:2, 3-10.
Dent-Brown, K. (1999) The Six Part Story Method (6PSM), Dramatherapy, 21:2, 10-14.
Gersie, A. (1983) Story-Telling and its Links with the Unconscious: A Story About Stories, Dramatherapy, 7:1, 7-12.
Gersie, A. (1993) On Being Both Author and Actor: Reflections on Therapeutic Storymaking, Dramatherapy, 15:3, 2-11.
Holmwood, C. (2005) A Tale of Tales, Dramatherapy 27:1, 19-23.
Lewis, J. and Banerjee, S. (2013) An Investigation of the Therapeutic Potential of Stories in Dramatherapy with Young People with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Dramatherapy, 35:1, 29-42.
Moore, J. (2010) A Story to Tell: Use of Story and Drama in Work with Substitute Families, Dramatherapy, 31:3, 3-9.
Moore, J. and Peacock, F. (2007) Being Before Doing: Life Story Work for Children with Attachment Difficulties, Dramatherapy, 29:1, 19-21.
Nicholson, H. (2012) The Performance of Memory: Drama Reminiscence and Autobiography, NJ Drama Australia Journal, 36:1, 62-74.
Redhouse, R. (2014) Life-story; Meaning Making through Dramatherapy in a Palliative Care Context, Dramatherapy, 36:2, 66-80.
Taylor, A. (2000) (Auto)biography and Drama: Life History Work with Adult Returners to Education, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 5:2, 249-261.
