What is a Psychodrama Workshop?

A psychodrama workshop is a safe space which ranges in a time capsule of half a day to mostly 3 days, where you travel with other people who feel a pull to the theme of the workshop. It is a journey filled with safety and human connection where each group member is free to explore in their own time and comfort, the areas they want to see and understand. Together with others as they explore the landscape of their inner, relational and professional world, they give the gift of their truth to others and receive the same in return. At the end of this journey, each participant leaves nourished and transformed in significant ways.

Flow of a Psychodrama Workshop

In order for me to explain the flow of a psychodrama workshop, I want you to visualise yourself in a room full of 25-30 people. We are all sitting in a U-shaped chair arrangement. The morning sunlight is still available to us. It is the beginning of the workshop and all of you are mostly new to each other. My first job as director, is to ensure that you all gently get to know each other, start feeling comfortable and start coming together as a group.

Group Warm-Up

In order for the group to feel safe with each other, I begin all my psychodrama workshops with small activities called ‘Warm Ups’. Let us say in small groups of 2 or 3, we start sharing, who gave us our name and what does it mean. This small intervention immediately will start helping group members to open up to each other and gradually get to know each other. We then move on to other warm ups that are connected to the theme of our workshop. Apart from helping people open up to one another, warm ups will also facilitate you and each group member to get in touch with the issues or areas of concern that are significant to them. 

A Psychodrama Piece

As we move along, let us say any one member reaches a place where they feel ready work on their issue. I will invite them to come to the centre of the group. The entire space within the U become the ‘Stage’ – A safe space where a protagonist can explore their inner world and new responses/behaviours without being judged. From this point onwards, our first psychodrama piece begins. Any person who takes up an exploration and works through their issue is called the ‘Protagonist’. Let us say that our first protagonist chooses to work with a stuckness in some area of their life. Till the time they work on their issue, you and the rest of the group members become the ‘Audience’ – a set of co-travellers who choose to empathically connect to the protagonist and witness them work through their life issue. I then facilitate the protagonist to choose someone from the audience to represent their stuckness. This process is called concretisation – putting out there in the form of a thing or person, a representation of any aspect or part of our inner world. When we choose a person from the audience to represent our inner aspect, they become the ‘Auxiliary Ego’ – a person who helps in the drama by playing a part/role of the protagonist’s inner world. This has multiple benefits. As soon as we put outside of ourselves, anything that is going on within us, firstly, we can see it more clearly. 

Secondly, our psychological energies that are caught up with managing things within get freed up. Thirdly, as we see things more clearly, other things related to our stuckness, start to emerge like, why and how did this stuckness form in the first place, how long has it been like this, what purpose is it serving and so on. For each of these explorations, the protagonist goes on choosing auxiliaries. Finally, this putting things out, offers the protagonist a chance to move around their entire concretisation and dialogue/converse with any aspects they feel like to gain a deeper understanding of it. With the realisations and connections that form due to this work, the protagonist is free to choose what they might want to change in any part or the entire concretisation, for their stuckness to start loosening and reducing.

Sharing

After every psychodrama piece, all the group members chosen as auxiliary egos and the ones who were the audience share with the protagonist, how their drama impacted/resonated for them. This sharing helps the protagonist and others in the group to experience that ‘they are not alone’. That each person has a history, their own story, their struggles and issues to be resolved. 

Group Direction

After a drama, the group either continues with more warm ups or personal dramas based on the emerging needs and themes in the group. At this point, as your director, I start following whatever the needs of the group are and we keep working together till we reach the end of the workshop. Sometimes instead of personal dramas, we take up socio-dramas because certain social themes that are applicable to all of us come up. My experience tells me that by the end of 2 days, unknown people become one in the sense of shared humanity. They all go enriched, as much by the work they have done, as well as what they witness of others. Psychodrama, also known the Theatre of Truth or the Therapeutic Theatre, heals us all and nourishes us through real stories and authentic connections both within us and with our group members. 

Transformational Impact of Psychodrama

• Psychodrama is a relational approach which believes that we all grow and heal in relationships. Therefore, throughout the workshop, there is an experience of being safely held by human closeness and togetherness. This experience itself is very healing.
• Psychodrama is very effective and efficient. Being a group method, the impact of any person’s work, is experienced by all the others. A lot of people who might not take up any of their work, benefit a lot through the impact of being an audience to other’s journey. 
• Psychodrama is a based on the foundational principle that our personalities are formed through experiences. Therefore, instead of talking about or analysing our psychological/life related/relational issues, if we enact them and use our entire body to understand and work through them, we are creating new experiences. Any event in which our thinking, feeling and bodily action/movement is involved, creates an opportunity to have new experiences. It also creates an opportunity to experiment with new responses to older mental/relational pattern in a safe group environment. 
• Whatever we experience, impacts us and transforms us permanently and therefore psychodrama creates transformation through experience. 
• At the anatomical level, with each new experience, new neural pathways are created in our brain thereby, freeing us up to have alternative responses. We can choose new responses in the future rather than our patterned ones. 
• Psychodrama helps us to become clear about the different forces behind our choices and thereby help in better decision making.
• It enhances our self-awareness, self-alignment and self-assurance.
• Helps us to face and deal with our deepest and darkest fears, insecurities and blocks.
• Creates a proactive space for us to consciously develop who we want to be in future.

Who Can Benefit from Psychodrama?

Well psychodrama is an all-encompassing discipline so in essence, it is meant for all. But specifically, people who would benefit a lot from it are:

• Mental Health Professionals like Psychiatrists, Psychotherapists, Drama Therapists, Art and Movement Therapists. Child Therapists
• Disaster Management Professionals who work with people under going intense PTSD and trauma as after effect of any natural or other calamities
• Social Workers, especially those who work with Addictions, Terminal Illness, Domestic Violence, Children’s Issues like Delinquency, Sexual Abuse.
• Educators and Life Skills Trainers who work not only with children’s relationship with academics but also help them build self-esteem
• Corporate Coaches and Leadership Trainers who facilitate building Self and other Leadership in people
• Parents who are wanting to understand their own psychological world and that of their child as the children’s world is very often a mirror of what is happening or not happening with the parents
• Couples who are wanting to understand the relational patterns they are co-creating and what they are contributing to the partnership consciously and unconsciously
• Anyone who is seeking personal transformation and living a self-aware life at their optimum best

Further Application and Certification in Psychodrama

As you continue along the journey with us, if you feel drawn to psychodrama and wish to train in the discipline in order to get certified, all the hours in these workshops would be counted in your hours of training. You can know more about the certification at about-piI