Theatre of Life
- Home
- Theatre of Life
The birth of Theatre of Life
Ever since Psychodrama in India (PiI) was initiated in January 2019, we had an understanding that psychodrama still had a long way to go before it became a part of everyday knowledge and conversations in India. We were aware that we needed to have a platform for this outreach. It needed to be a platform that provided a small safe container of time,which helped the audience experience psychodrama. It allowed people from any walks of life to feel welcome and feel free to explore this discipline. In a conversation with my mentor Sue Daniel, I got to know about the Theatre of Spontaneity they ran at the Moreno Psychodrama Society in Melbourne. They had kept the same name as Dr. J.L.Moreno’s original theatre of spontaneity.
As I got interested, I read up more about the original Theatre of Spontaneity in Vienna. I found out that Dr. Moreno directed his Stegreiftheatre (theatre of spontaneity) on the top of the building Maysedergasse 2. He rented a room on the top floor of this building from VBKO, an Austrian association of women artists. He ran the theatre there and the performances were free and open for all. “The goal was maximum audience participation and the dramatic material arose from the audience or arose from the actor’s own ideas.” Moreno wanted to get rid of playwrigthed dramas and encourage spontaneous improvisation and creativity. To know more, please visit https://www.morenomuseum.org/en/content/theater-spontaneity-wien
We realised that something with the same spirit and inclusion was required for India. Being psychodramatists following the Morenian philosophy that everyone has to make psychodrama their own, we at PiI, came together and asked ourselves, what name would make this process our own. Do we want to follow the same name, is this name copyrighted in any manner, does the family need to be reached out for right to this name. Lot of questions like this were discussed. We also knew that psychodrama is also called the Theatre of Truth. During the course of these discussions, we came across the ‘Living Newspaper’ experiment, which was about working through the day’s current events. That is when the answer came together for us. We knew that we had to name our process and platform, the Theatre of Life.
In India, each of us is living very diverse realities and lives. The current events of different Indian’s daily lives are very different in many aspects like rural and urban lifestyles, socio-economic differences, gender conditioning, education and occupational opportunities, religio-political realities, cultural and food diversities. It always feels as if while at one level, we all live in one nation, yet all Indians live a different life. If we were to create a platform to help all Indians experience psychodrama, it had to have a name that is inclusive of all diversity and all that their life entails. Thus was born the “ Theatre of Life”.
The Journey of the Theatre of Life
The first Theatre of Life (ToL) was conducted on 19th July 2019 at our office in Ahmedabad by Roohdaar. Different trainees like Roma, Sarita , Nikita and our senior mentor Sue Daniel were involved in the organising and presenting of these ToLs. From July 2019 till February 2020, all our 6 ToLs names were conducted at our office or at huge halls in our colleagues’ homes who very generously offered their homes when we were expecting more than 25 participants. We tried to maintain the rhythm of one ToL every month.
In March 2020, covid hit and the world froze. We realised that we needed to do something quickly. The world was in the throes of anxiety, illness, uncertainty, survival and lockdown. There was an immense need and yet a huge absence of actual physical human connection. What keeps all mammals self regulated, (in person meeting in groups), was taken away from all of us. We were as a team still new to psychodrama and the ToL but we needed to do something quickly. We all held on tightly to Moreno’s philosophy around spontaneity and creativity and took a leap of faith. Through our fears, we all learnt to run ToLs online. A whole new world opened!! We made the ToLs free of cost and in some months ran them multiple times so that we could cater to the social and emotional needs of as many people as we could. Till December of 2022, we kept running all our ToLs online.
As it became safer and people felt more comfortable to meet each other in person, we restarted the ToL in person from January 2023. We took in the learning of the covid times and realised that online ToLs were also very effective and they provided opportunity to others living out of the city to participate and experience psychodrama . Ever since January 2023, our ToLs therefore have been a combination of online and offline formats. Since its inception, we have organised 37 ToLs in the last 5 and half years spreading the magic of psychodrama to around 600 people (37*20 participants per ToL). (Please verify these numbers)
The Purpose of the Theatre of Life
The Theatre of Life in the shape and for what it runs today, serves varied purposes.
- The main purpose of the Theatre of Life (ToL) is to spread awareness in people about psychodrama.
- It helps people to get in touch with their own spontaneity and creativity that lie within each of us. Moreno named this part of us as the creative genius. This part of us has the capability to be alive in each moment and find new possibilities of recreating and redefining ourselves!!
- The other major purpose of our ToL is to facilitate people to experience the power of group processes, to help them to look at some parts of themselves through their own or other’s work during these sessions. Being an audience to anyone’s drama enhances both self-awareness and deep empathy with another at the same time.
- The ToL helps people to experience that less is more. While each ToL is only two hours, this time container is not less. There is a lot of human connection and deep work that happens during this time. Participants are amazed and deeply touched by the potency of group work.
- Finally, the ToL is a spontaneity test for all our senior PiI trainees. Once they reach a level of role development where they want to try and experiment working with different audiences, the ToL provides them a safe space to try their feet as a director, in the presence of another senior trainer and/or their supervisor. This creates an experience where the audience, the protagonist, the auxiliary egos and the director are all spontaneous explorers and learners at the same time!!
The Theatre of Life - Events
