Moreno would meet with actors and artists at the Café Museum in Vienna. He enjoyed the creative energy that these meetings sparked in him and eventually got the loan of a theatre owned by the father of an actress. Vienna at the time was going through political upheaval and the Austro-Hungarian empire was crumbling. This idea came to him to put on an event about finding a new King for Austria. He publicised the event and promised that the new king would be in attendance. Politicians, clergymen and other influential people were invited and on the day of the ‘show’ there were about 1000 people at the theatre in attendance. On the stage was a plush red chair with gilt arms and back. On the seat of the chair was a crown.
Moreno appeared on the stage and announced that he was the King’s jester. He asked the audience for volunteers who would like to come up on stage to be the king. The audience had mixed reactions. Some stood up in disgust and left the theatre. Others shouted and jeered using the event to voice their political views. Nobody came up on the stage to play the role of the king. Moreno states that this was the day that psychodrama was born, April 1st 1921. Later he would acknowledge that it was actually a Sociodrama. This acting out of a common concern of a group using made up roles had its first appearance on that day.
It is this date, April 1, 1921, upon which psychodrama was born, Moreno maintains, and every serious student of psychodrama learns this fact, even though the event itself is what Moreno would later call Sociodrama, and even though there were events preceding and subsequent to this one that are considered as germane to the origins of psychodrama. The one that most closely resembles therapeutic psychodrama occurred a couple of years after this official “birth” of psychodrama.- Nolte 2014
As the pandemic continues to challenge all our spontaneity, I am encouraged by the number of people who have turned up for our Open sessions and our Personal Growth Groups (PGGs). We have had quite a few runs and have managed to experience full psychodramas produced in our studio at Promises. We have also launched an Instagram page for Psychodrama Singapore, and our Facebook page is still up! Do join our FB group or Instagram Page to avoid missing out on upcoming workshops and training.
Several queries have come in asking for training in the Psychodrama method, and we are planning a series of workshops to be run in January 2022. Our pilot series of workshops run so far has been received with enthusiasm, and this we will be offering in 2022. The series, ‘Creating An Atmosphere of Hope’, will be in 4 parts. Each workshop is a stand-alone session, but if you attend all four, you will benefit greatly as they build on the skills learned in the previous workshop. There is a bundle discount, of course, for all 4 so do sign up quickly. Unfortunately, places are limited due to pandemic restrictions.
As always, do come for our Open sessions or join one of our Personal Growth Groups, which have been fantastic for supporting people through much of this year! Do bring your friends and introduce them to this wonderful method. We find that word of mouth is our best marketing tool! So, if Psychodrama has done something amazing for you, spread the joy!
Lastly, we want to hear from you! Let us know how we can better serve you. Do fill out our survey to give us feedback on what your needs are. Our hope is that a community of psychodrama enthusiasts may affect change in the lives of people around us. As Moreno put it, “A truly therapeutic procedure can have for its objective no less than the whole of mankind.”
*Please fill the survey out by day-end of 17th Dec 2021 (Friday).
As 2021 comes to a close we would like to wish all of you Happy Holidays and a safe time of celebration with loved ones. May God bless all that you put your hand to this year and in the year to come!
Luv’ Sharmini CP (Certified Practitioner) of Psychodrama & PAT Founder, Psychodrama Singapore
New Upcoming Psychodrama 101 sessions & Personal Growth Group series:
The first quarter of 2021 has passed by like a whirlwind! What will the rest of 2021 bring?
In February, I received exciting news from the American Board of Examiners (ABE) that I had passed my psychodrama exams and am now a Certified Psychodramatist by the ABE. Being the first fully qualified Psychodramatist in Singapore certified by the ABE has been a long journey. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the years of my own growth as a director of psychodramas and of group psychotherapy. I recently also received news that I am now a PAT or Practice as Trainer. This opens more doors for me to give out psychodrama training hours that can count toward certification with the ABE!! So, look out! Our training program towards certification as Experiential Facilitators and Psychodramatist is in the pipeline! I will start running short training workshops in which you can start accumulating your hours sometime soon!
In the meantime, keep coming for our Personal growth groups so you get to do your own work and experience the action method of psychodrama in more depth.
After having our first in-person Open Session in January, we ran a Personal Growth Group that comprised of mostly counsellors and facilitators. Many psychodramas were done on various themes including Chinese New Year and the Chinese Zodiac animals. We thought about which animal we would prefer to be and had some hilarious fun!
Following this we started a Women’s group called “Disarming My Inner Criticâ€. The 6 week group is almost finished and we plan to run another one beginning in May. Having women of all ages in the group has been a real gift as mothers in the group gain perspective from younger women who have them play the role of daughters. The healing in the group has been amazing to witness. Do join us for the next one starting on 22 Apr – “Ready Set Glowâ€.
Our Open sessions have been held monthly with the participation of people from all walks of life. Our last one was fully subscribed and we had to start a waiting list as spaces are limited due to Covid-19 restrictions. We have 2 bottles of sanitizer in the room, tissues and wipes, as well as extra masks in case people need a fresh one. All the necessary precautions are being taken to ensure we all stay safe! Join us or tell your friends about it!
The pandemic changed the way I run groups and has called on me for greater spontaneity and resilience. What I took so much for granted has become a luxury today. Having large groups in a room, smilling about and shaking hands is a sweet memory from a day I hope will return someday.Â
This year in January 2021, we began our first group in Singapore after the number of cases dropped and the situation remained fairly stable. We were allowed a total of eight (8) people in the room, including myself. With two large bottles of sanitizer and a box of disposable masks, we began our first session. We sat one meter apart (roughly 39 inches), and began with introductions. So how do group members see each other and have connection with faces obscured by masks and social distancing creating further separation?
With only eyes exposed and body language to read, the power of tele still is at work.
Tele, a term coined by Jacob Moreno, is referred to by him as the invisible connection that flows between two people. Ann Hale, in her book, *‘Conducting Clinical Sociometric Explorations’, states Moreno’s definition of it as, ‘insight into’, ‘appreciation of’, and ‘feeling for’, the ‘actual makeup’ of the other person. Most of us have experienced ‘tele’. That inexplicable feeling that you ‘click’ with someone after talking for a short time. Often it starts before you meet, when you see each other across a room and know that you would like to meet this person. It is that intangible element that attracts people to each other and starts the process of communication. These connections between people were observed by Moreno who began to map them out in his studies of social networks. This study of connections between people he termed as Sociometry from the Latin root words “socius’ for companion and ‘metrum’ for measurement.
Planning the sessions, I always begin with Sociometry. As Ann Hale says Sociometry’s purpose is to reveal information about group members and to show, “… the connections which exist between group members.†Shared experiences people have are discovered as we do warmups such as ‘Polarities’, Locograms, Spectograms and other sociometric structures. These exercises get people moving and into their bodies, thereby assisting them to access their spontaneity more easily.
Sociometry includes having people choose based on certain criterion with a view that the choice will lead to an action. For example, asking the group, “Who would you like to have lunch with later today?â€, means that their choices will be followed by them having lunch with the person they chose. Thus tele comes into play as people make choices. The work of a group leader is then to pick warm up exercises that help to reveal more about each individual so that each group member has a higher likelihood of being chosen by others. So the outliers who are shy reveal surprising details about their lives and interests that make them more attractive as choices to others in the group. This has the power to often re-distribute the attention from the most chosen person in the group to others, thereby creating more inclusion and group cohesion.
During one of our sessions the protagonist chose someone to play her younger self, feeling ashamed that she couldn’t understand the language everyone else was speaking in the pre-school. She felt alone and that nobody was going to help her. After the drama, the auxillary she chose shared a story about how she had also been shamed for not being able to speak the language in pre-school and was still carrying the trauma and shame. The person the protagonist had chosen to play the teacher, shared that he comes from a long line of teachers which was why he could take on the role so easily. This all came as a surprise to the protagonist who had no idea about the backgrounds of these two group members, but she acted on her sense of connection and insight into the makeup of people in the group.
In another session, a woman who was doing a drama about her mother chose someone who had a mother with similar issues. This was not known to the protagonist and during the sharing, the auxilary spoke about having a similar mother who was clinically depressed and stayed in her room all the time just like that of the protagonist. She was able to play the role so well because it was so familiar to her! Many such ‘coincidences’ have led me to consider tele as an almost intuitive knowing that we each have within us. This knowing seems to be activated by our spontaneity as we go with the flow. There is almost an existential aspect to it which echoes Moreno’s theory that we are all connected via the universal consciousness of the ‘Godhead’, as he put it.
As I look back on these sessions, I am once again blown away by the power of the action method of psychodrama and sociometry. Using it to build the group, I see how true Ann Hale’s words are when she says Sociometry is “…a methodological necessity for the conscientious group leader…â€. I echo this sentiment as I lean on sociometry to build connections far beyond what the eye can see!
*Hale, Ann E. (1981). Conducting clinical sociometric explorations. Royal Publishing Company: Roanoke, Virginia.
Time has flown by this year and we hope it’s been a year of discovery and enlightenment for you – but if it hasn’t, no worries!
We’ve lined up some great events for you to close off 2019 with a skip in your step!
Personal Growth Group: Rising Above II (5 Weeks)
Our Personal Growth Groups will use psychodrama which employs a combination of experiential methods – sociometry, role theory, and group dynamics – to facilitate insight, personal growth, spontaneity, self-discovery, and integration of the mind, body and emotions.
Experience the fun and spontaneity of working together in a group of individuals from all walks of life. Participants will be given the opportunity to explore their own Psychodrama in this group within the 5 sessions.
Places are limited to 8 individuals for this group with 5 consecutive weekly sessions starting 22 November 2019, every Friday from 7.00pm to 9.30pm.
Schedule*: – 22 November 2019 – 29 November 2019 – 6 December 2019 – 13 December 2019 – 20 December 2019 *subject to change
Standard: SG $250.00
*Open Sessions are a prerequisite for first-timers intending to join Personal Growth Groups.
This workshop will equip you to engage your group members in activities that will promote spontaneity and deeper sharing; that goes beyond talk therapy. Participants will learn how to warm their groups up and to facilitate lively role playing and group participation.
This
poem quoted by JL Moreno is an illustration of the concept of role reversal in
Psychodrama.
When someone steps forward and says ‘yes’ to being spontaneous and thereby to being creative, they are open to the possibilities of changing perspectives.
As
I’ve directed Psychodramas over the years, I have come to see the Psychodrama Stage
as a laboratory where the protagonist experiments with different possibilities
and outcomes. Relationships are explored and as role reversal takes place, the protagonist
gets to experience the Other and the psyche of the Other that lives in them.
We all have a version of our Mother, our Father, our sibling, our enemy that lives in us. This version when brought on the stage gets concretized (or made concrete/ real) by the use of another group member who takes on the role as an Auxillary. As the protagonist reverses roles and takes on the role of the Other, he or she can then take on the posture, speech style and warm up to being that Other person. Their version emerges and the encounter with the Auxillary playing them takes place. They then reverse roles and the Auxillary (as the Other) will repeat what has been said and the protagonist experiences a dialogue with the Other. This goes on with several role reversals until the Protagonist’s purpose has been achieved with the Director.
This
experiencing of a different perspective engages empathy and deepens
understanding of the Other. Moreno called this the Encounter.
The
poem quoted is from his seminal book “Who Shall Surviveâ€.
