Main description:

Space, Place and Dramatherapy: International Perspectives provides radical, critical and practical insights into the relevance and significance of space and place in dramatherapy practice. Bringing together an international breadth of contributors, the chapters of this book reveal extensive reflections on the many spaces in which dramatherapists and their clients work and offers research implications for those wishing to critically examine their own symbolic or structural spaces in dramatherapy practice.

Chapters consider space and place from many angles: ritual and symbolic spaces; transitional and play spaces; educational and interpersonal spaces; and scenographic and architectural space. The book examines the impact of space on human (and more-than-human) relationships, dramatherapy practice and processes, and mental health, offering new avenues of research and critical enquiry.

This volume is the first of its kind to rigorously elucidate the importance of space within the field of dramatherapy, and is essential reading for academics, scholars and postgraduate students of dramatherapy as well as practicing dramatherapists and professionals within the wider domains of arts and health.

Contents:

Foreword. Prelude. The obviousness of space. Part 1: The built environment and scenography in dramatherapy. Chapter 1: Teachings from Echo. Chapter 2: How hut making in dramatherapy created a therapeutic play-space. Chapter 3: Space plays a leading role. The therapeutic power of the built environment and co-design processes in dramatherapy. Chapter 4: Neutral Mask and Embodied Dreamwork, Spaces of Containment. Part 2: Education & Play Space in Dramatherapy. Chapter 5: Learning and Therapeutic Spaces in Dramatherapy & Education. Chapter 6: Connecting Spaces. Playing to Relate. Chapter 7: Essential Factors both practical and imaginal for defining the dramatherapy play space in special education. Part 3: Ritual, Intersubjective & Spiritual Space. Chapter 8: The Fullness of Emptiness. The significance of Space and the usefulness of the concepts of Shunya (the void/empty space), Akasha or Vyoman (open vastness), Kha (the enclosed space) in Hinduism and Buddhism for dramatherapy practice. Chapter 9: 'Clear the space. Claim the space. Sanctify the space'. Intersubjectivity and spirituality in dramatherapy according to Roger Grainger. Chapter 10: Liminality and ritual in Dramatherapy - the intersubjective space. Chapter 11: Preparing the ritual space: the transition from everyday reality to dramatic reality. Postlude. Future spaces of dramatherapy