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Millions of people in the world experience trauma ‘60% of men and 50% of women’ (U.S Department of Veterans Department, 2022), As a result, many methods have been discovered to help people manage and confront the events (events) that resulted in them being traumatized. Performance is one way that we can do this. We can use performance in many forms to help us take control of what has happened to us, including acting, dance, and singing. These tools allow us to have complete control as we express the emotional turmoil that comes with experiencing a traumatic event. This is especially important as the memories we are revisiting are times when we did not have any control over what was happening, leading us to find all the ways we could have done something different to change the outcome of the event, even if we did nothing wrong. Throughout my life, I have used many methods to confront my trauma and help me move on from what has happened to me, including songwriting, poetry, and dance, however, I still have not put myself back in the situation and reenacted the events that traumatized me, so I decided to make my Practice as Research focused on how theatre can be used as a form of therapy. In my performance, I focused on my experiences with child abuse, abusive relationships, sexual assault and how they have affected different aspects of my life, ending the performance with a visual representation of the effects those events have had on my mental health, displaying the fight I have with myself and how my view of the world has been severely affected from these events. After someone has experienced trauma, they ‘: become reactive and disorganized: sounds and lights bother them, unwanted images from the past intrude and they panic or fly into rages (Olson, 2016). This can be extremely challenging to deal with mentally as our brains force us into remembering the event (or events) that took place; however, it also brings all of the emotional distress that comes with those memories. This is why it is so important for us to process these emotions healthily, relieving these symptoms and allowing us to be healthier mentally and physically.
Acting has been used as an escape for many people. The idea that you can forget about your own life and escape the stresses of your current situation that you are in makes people interested in acting. Originally, I had the same feeling, being able to leave all my issues and live as someone else for a while was very endearing to me, however, this is only a temporary solution. When acting, it would sometimes make me scared to stop as it was such a breath of fresh air. Acting gave me an escape from my life, meaning I did not have to think about the issues that were happening in my personal life. I could leave all that stress and worry at the door and become someone completely different, not having to think about my worries. This resulted in me being intrigued about how acting could be used to deal with those issues head-on, leading me to pick roles I related with on a personal level, slowly helping me confront the issues in my life and have a greater appreciation for how acting can be used in many different ways. Being able to relate to someone and have that distance from my issues and explore them through the eyes of someone else, gave me a better perspective on what I was going through, exploring how others are also affected by these issues
Writing the script for my performance ‘Dollhouse’ was very challenging but, extremely rewarding. It forced me to confront the memories and feelings I had been trying to forget, resulting in me accepting the events that took place and allowing me to start moving on. I wanted to tackle my emotions connected to the events I was writing about and display them creatively, as ‘Many individuals are unable to express themselves verbally due to emotional difficulties’ (Carnegie, 2022). It can be hard to put our feelings into words, so I decided to add a section that was choreographed to display how trauma has affected me emotionally and as a result, educate the audience on how people who have survived a traumatic experience can view the world and other people differently, compared to someone who has never experienced a traumatic event in their life. Trauma can cause a person to not be able to read social cues and struggle to identify whether someone is threatening, happy, or neutral. I showcased this in my performance through the use of movement.
I also touched on how my personal life was affected by these events in my performance ‘Dollhouse’, showcasing how trauma can affect personal relationships, causing me to get involved in the wrong crowds and participate in activities I was not comfortable with to fit in. Trauma can make someone feel like they do not belong in the world like the universe is trying to get rid of them as it throws everything at them. This causes a feeling of loneliness, not knowing where their place in the world is, causing them to hang out with people that are not good for them mentally or physically. This idea resulted in me starting to smoke at a very young age as that was what my friends at the time did. I thought if I did not go along with what they were doing, I would get punished in the same way I did when I was a child, and it would put me in an unsafe situation, no matter how fabricated that idea was. My trauma from childhood abuse made me feel like I could not say no to anyone. I wanted to touch on this in my performance to explore those feelings and show how trauma can cause an individual to lose themselves and give in to peer pressure from others, no matter how much the individual does not want to partake in an activity. I did this by re-enacting a memory from my childhood, where I was around my friends who had recently started smoking weed, which made me very uncomfortable as I was only 13 years old. I felt this re-creation of these events helped me to take ownership of what happened and let me come to terms with how my brain was wired before I had started to confront my trauma and was desperately trying to distance myself from the events that left me traumatized. It made me see myself as two different people, I was someone else when I was out with my friends, compared to when I was at home in an abusive environment.
When creating my performance, I looked at other performances that have been made about social issues. This resulted in me discovering Pina Bausch’s performance ‘Kontakthof’. I was highly inspired by Pina Bausch, who created the performance ‘Kontakthof’ in 1978. During this performance, we see a woman standing on a stage whilst a group of men surrounds her, playing with her like she is a doll, slapping and manipulating her body which grows more aggressive as the performance continues, touching on important issues, such as racism, sexism, and cultural appropriation.
In many ways, Kontakthof is a piece of its time, and yet it still speaks to us today.’ (Guerreiro, 2022). I created my version of ‘Kontakthof’ in my performance, having the characters from the show surround me, hitting me, pulling my hair, throwing me, and manipulating my body. At one point during this, everyone goes quiet and one character lends me their hand to get me off the floor, then throws me to another character in the circle. I did this to showcase the internal struggle that comes with trauma, showing how I think about myself and how I think others view me, having the other characters repeat phrases, for example, ‘you are worthless’, ‘I gave you everything’, ‘why were you even born’, ‘we were happier without you’, etc. As well as having moments where I trust the characters who have hurt me, to only get hurt again. This showcased how it feels inside my head, struggling to see positive social cues and seeing everyone as a threat. People who have experienced trauma at a young age result in the individuals having a different thought process as an outcome of the trauma. This means ‘We focus on four mechanisms of enhanced threat processing: identification of environmental threats: disruptions in learning mechanisms: heightened emotional responses to potential threats, and difficulty disengaging from negative emotional content.’ (McLaughlin, Lambert, 2017:29-34). This causes individuals to withdraw from people as they are constantly in fight or flight mode, mentally prepared for an attack at all times. This is incredibly exhausting as I feel like I can never fully relax as my brain is wired to always be on the alert. I feel this is part of dealing with trauma from a very young age that people are not educated on. I wanted to show people how trauma affects your brain permanently, causing many issues in our day-to-day lives.
Using performance as a form of therapy has been around for many years to help people process the events that have happened to them in their lives, resulting in better mental health and physical well-being. This is a form of therapy known as ‘drama therapy’. Drama therapy allows us to have ‘…a sense of control and manageability over the incident'(Sajnani, Johnson, 2014:15) which helps us be able to confront those memories. However, if this is not done correctly and in a safe environment, there is a risk of re-traumatizing the individual as it could be too much for them and only remind them of the event (or events) instead of processing them. This is very important to keep in mind when creating a performance as a form of therapy, as using this method without a professional who is trained in practice with drama therapy, can result in the individual not having the support they require to confront these memories. When creating my performance ‘Dollhouse’, this was a fear that I had as I did not know how I would react when putting myself back into a reenactment of my trauma. After my performance, however, I felt like I had overcome something that had been holding me back for so long. The feeling of accomplishment and being able to open up about my past which has been hidden from people for so long, was extremely freeing. I felt like I could finally be myself as I did not weigh keeping my past a secret from the public, I can now just live my life freely without guilt or shame holding me back. That is what drama therapy is for, the individual whose trauma is being reenacted. That is something I discovered was very liberating, not having to make the performance for anyone but myself. My goal was not to create a performance that would make sense to the audience, or be an enjoyable or memorable piece. I wanted to create something for myself and tried to get myself out of the mindset that a performance has to have a structure, storyline, and the classic beginning, middle, and end. I wanted to break that mold as that was not what I was trying to achieve, this was a performance to help me better myself and my mental health and I think I achieved that goal through creating and performing ‘Dollhouse’.
Drama therapy has been used for many different people and situations in the world, including in prisons. Prisoners can go through drama therapy as a way of coming to terms with what has happened and expressing the emotions they have been suppressing, especially in male inmates, as there is pressure to suppress what they feel. ‘: every man in there was desperate for a chance to escape his emotional repression through drama.’ (Cunningham, 2019). This type of therapy is very important for inmates as it allows them to fully express their feelings in an environment that allows them to explore their feelings in different ways in a safe environment.
As well as working through personal situations with inmates using drama therapy, it has also been used to help inmates feel empathy and remorse, and ‘: help prisoners address the challenges and problems in their lives with the overall aim of breaking the offending cycle.’ (Sadowski, 2016) resulting in them having a better understanding of themselves and others. This is vital for inmates as this works towards when they leave prison and have to re-adjust to living with the public, which can be a very jarring experience for those who have been in prison for many years. This is also especially important for female inmates who have experienced sexual abuse. Drama therapy gives them an outlet in prison that helps them ‘: cope with their feelings of worthlessness and PTSD symptoms that stem from their experiences with sexual harassment, abuse, and rape.’ (Crawford, 2019:6) Allowing people to work through the emotional distress that comes with being sexually abused is a vital part of beginning healing. When someone has been sexually abused, they feel isolated and worthless. In my own experiences, I felt like my purpose in life was to be an object for sex. My entire view of myself was completely misconstrued, leading me to mistreat myself and have an extreme feeling that providing pleasure was my only purpose in life. I have gone through many types of therapy to help me deal with these feelings, however, being able to show how I feel instead of saying it helped me process those emotions more than I did when talking about them. It can be hard to verbalize our feelings, which is why drama therapy is so important for us to let us have a creative outlet and fully express our feelings through movement when we struggle to put them into words.
Research into drama therapy is difficult to conduct, as every experience is different. However, ‘: researchers have freely borrowed from the related fields’ (Landy, 1984:89) to investigate the effects of drama therapy, for example, psychology research methods. Researchers have collected data using statistics from experiments carried out, where they have had two groups of people with mental health issues or trauma, and have given one group drama therapy and not the other, researching the effects they have had and if there was any improvement with the group that received drama therapy over a certain number of weeks. This has provided us with statistics on how successful drama therapy is for working through mental health issues and trauma, resulting in the practice being used in many different environments.
In conclusion, using performance as a form of therapy, also known as drama therapy, is an effective tool to help us process trauma and give us a creative outlet to express the emotions we feel. The emotions that come alongside trauma can be hard to describe in words, so having drama therapy to express those emotions creatively can be very beneficial and help people accept what has happened to them, which is very important to start the healing process after experiencing a traumatic event. ‘Dollhouse’ achieved this for me, resulting in me being able to process and accept those emotions that come with trauma, allowing me to start to move on from those memories that have burdened me for most of my life.
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