HOW DRAMA THERAPY CAN HELP CREATE COMMUNITY An explanation of Urban Play presented at the First International Community Arts Conference, in Daegu, South Korea Fred Landers, April 27, 2013 In all the cities of the world, there are unspoken rules for how to behave in public places, such as in shopping areas, on the street, on buses or trains, or in public parks. The rules for how to behave in public places are not written down anywhere and we almost never think about them, yet we are careful to make our behavior conform to them, and we feel embarrassed if we fail to live by them. Because we know the unspoken rules, we keep our voices at the right volume, we move in a way that does not interfere with the movements of other people, we keep our feelings to ourselves, and we only talk to strangers if we need help. If we talk to our friends or family members, we try not to look at anyone else very much, and try not to make ourselves noticeable to other people. In general, we act as if we are alone, as if no one is here but us, even when we are surrounded by other people. Conforming to unwritten rules, we tend to remain strangers to each other. Alone even in a crowd, we may feel powerless to make friends, and hopeless about sharing our experiences. In public places, we often suffer from a lack of community. Friends Playing Together and Inviting Strangers to Play With Us For several years, groups of my friends and I have been going to public places in New York City, such as outdoor art festivals, public parks, and city streets, and playing together. Roaming through a crowd or standing in a circle facing each other, my friends and I spontaneously invent movements and sounds that we make together, and we play Fred Landers, Drama Therapy/Community, p. 2 out theatrical scenes that occur to us on the spot. We have found that when we play together, acting silly and obviously enjoying ourselves within our own group, strangers who are in the area feel free to watch us and laugh, move the way we’re moving as they walk by us, or join us in playing for a while. Moving strangely and acting silly, those of us who are playing take the social risk that we will feel humiliated in public, but taking this risk together has just the opposite effect. By not forcing ourselves to be quiet and well-behaved, we release an enormous amount of joy, which we express in our movements and scenes. This joy is shared with the people around us. We gamble against possible humiliation, and we find every time that the gamble pays off enormously, not only for ourselves, but for the strangers around us, who are not really strangers anymore. My friends and I have come to feel that playing in public places like this has a very positive effect on people, whether they watch us from a distance or join us in playing. Regardless of how much strangers participate, they seem to be affected by the fact that a group of us have decided together not to conform to the rules of correct behavior in public. In fact, we have decided to create our own rules by playing. Whether witnessing or participating, the people we meet experience an expansion in the behaviors that are possible for them. Because they see us break and transform some of the unspoken rules, these people discover a new freedom in themselves, and it is an experience they share with each other. They become freer with us and with each other. They move toward being a community. Urban Play My friends and I call this practice of playing in public places Urban Play (Landers, Fred Landers, Drama Therapy/Community, p. 3 2012a, 2012b). It works the best when the crowds are not too thick and the strangers we encounter are not in a hurry to be somewhere else. We have played on the streets of New York City, but more successfully in a park called the Highline that is above the streets. We played in the crowd at the first inauguration of President Obama, but we found that strangers play more with us at more art-oriented events, such as the Figment Festival, or political events, such as the massive protest called Occupy Wall Street. We have found that it works best if we move to a new location in a crowd, play there for a while, and when the energy of watchers and participants go down, move to a different location in the crowd. The combination of novelty and familiarity we get by doing this seems to encourage the best responses. Typically, we move through a crowd in a silly way, sometimes flapping our arms as if we are birds, or pretend to be gangsters, hiding from each other behind trees and people. The group of us then tends to gather somewhere in the crowd and begin to move the same way, usually while standing in a circle facing each other. Sometimes the playful movements and sounds we make together evolve into an improvised scene, such as some of us pretending to get married, or someone pretending to construct a sculpture using the rest of us. Drama Therapy My friends and I are drama therapists. We lead therapy sessions in hospitals, day treatment clinics, and schools, where we help our clients heal and grow by improvising movements and theatrical scenes with us. In our work as drama therapists, we generally work in a room, where we play together with the same group of clients for an hour. Sometimes we work with one client at a time, in an individual session, and sometimes we Fred Landers, Drama Therapy/Community, p. 4 see clients in our own private clinics. In our work as drama therapists, we usually play with our clients in a room, and every client in the room is expected to participate or else leave the room. Typically, we do not allow anyone to watch the session without participating in it. Using their imaginations, expressing the impulses of their bodies, and responding to what is happening in their relationships during the play, the clients find that they have increased the options they have in their lives after the session is over. Some drama therapists also plan and rehearse performances with their clients, for the powerful healing effects on the clients of giving voice to their experiences. However, in this case, what the clients show publically is a rehearsed performance of material they have chosen to show publically. Using Drama Therapy to Create Community When my friends and I, all of us drama therapists, play in public places, we are especially capable of taking the social risks involved in ignoring social rules, the rules for how people are supposed to behave. After all, playing with people is our profession. It’s true that we are used to playing privately, in a therapy room, but when we do Urban Play, we get a sense of freedom from making what is usually private, public. Practicing Urban Play, we want to give the people we meet the best possible chance of playing and becoming a community. People who watch us or play with us often ask us, “Who are you guys?” We answer only in a playful way, by moving in a silly way, or by making up silly names for ourselves. Also, we do not dress alike, or wear anything that would represent a shared identity. We don’t identify ourselves because if we did, this would bring in rules for how Fred Landers, Drama Therapy/Community, p. 5 people should behave. If we said we were actors, then the social rules governing performance would apply. If we said we were drama therapists, then people would place themselves in relation to the rules of therapy. In spite of our intentions, the rules would be imposed, and people would follow them. Instead, we just appear somewhere, we play with anyone who will play with us, and then we leave. We do not stop our playing in order to answer questions. Everywhere we go, we believe that making play our top priority maximizes our contribution to making a community. References Landers, F. (2012a). Urban Play: Imaginatively responsible behavior as an alternative to neoliberalism.” Arts in Psychotherapy, 39, 3, pp. 201-205. doi:10.1016/j.aip.2012.03.001. http://www.academia.edu/842110/Urban_Play_Imaginatively_Responsible_Beha vior_as_an_Alternative_to_Neoliberalism Landers, F. (2012b). Occupy Wall Street, Urban Play and the affirmation of crisis. Journal for Urban Culture Research, 4. http://www.cujucr.com/downloads/JUCR%20Vol%204_2012_F.pdf, http://www.academia.edu/1997154/Occupy_Wall_Street_Urban_Play_and_the_A ffirmation_of_Crisis