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What's new, what they're building, and how they're advancing a performatory or social therapeutic orientation to community building
Compiled by Esther Farmer
| December 2010 |
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Over the past six years, the Institute has welcomed 57 students to its International Class, and we look forward to meeting a new class next October. Coming from different places and professions, they are psychologists from India, Pakistan and Brazil, applied theatre practitioners from Kenya and Canada, community organizers from Uganda and Taiwan, psychotherapists from South Africa and Argentina, youth workers from Nicaragua and Mexico, and educators and social workers from the Philippines and the US. They share a desire to change the world -- and an eagerness to take advantage of the unique platform the International Class offers them to create a global support network, to engage the philosophical, political and psychological issues of their practice, and to study and train as developmentalists with creators of social therapeutic methodology under the direction of Lois Holzman. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from our colleagues' various performance stages.
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United States
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2010-11 International Class Welcomed to NYC
The members of the 2010-11 International Class (from India, Pakistan, Serbia, the US, and Uganda) dove into their year of training with a 3-day immersion in performance, creativity and social therapeutics at Performing the World 2010 in New York City. Hosted by the Institute and the All Stars Project, the three-day performance "happening" drew some 500 participants from 38 countries, including more than a dozen International Class alumni. They played, performed and created conversations, dances, music and skits organized around the theme: "Can Performance Change the World?" Networking and conspiring with other innovators, our resourceful international colleagues shared and advanced their own community-based programs.
Class of 2009: Still Performing!
Since their graduation in June 2009, members of the fifth International Class (Midz Aligada / Phillippines; Celiane Camargo-Borges / Brazil; Simon DeAbreu / Canada; Lisa Dombrow / US; Maggie Moremi / South Africa; Peter Nsubuga / Uganda; Prativa Sengupta / India; Esben Wilstrup / Denmark) have persisted in building their class as a support network that each could access from far points across the globe. Together they raised $4,700 for airfares to enable classmates from India and Uganda to attend Performing the World. For a few, it was a first attempt at grassroots fundraising.
At Performing the World they led a workshop entitled: "Being Hit Over the Head with Development," (see photo below) in which they shared how they continued to build their group with consistent communication, support and encouragement.
They reported on support projects they had begun to organize, including Friends of SEVAC an organization designed to provide methodological and financial support to the Calcutta-based grassroots mental health organization, SEVAC, founded by classmate Prativa Sengupta. They were joined by Ishita Sanyal/India (class of 2008).
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Kenya
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Kitche Magak, (class of 2006), presented at Acting Together on the World Stage: A Conference on Theatre and Peace Building in Conflict Zones in New York. Sponsored by Theatre Without Borders the conference premiered a film (also shown at Performing the World) that accompanies a new book on theatre and peace, called Acting Together: Performance and Creative Transformation of Conflict. The book features Magak's community organizing work in Kisumu. Magak, who directs the Nomadic Youth Reproductive Health Project (NYRHP) under the auspices of the African Medical Research Foundation, presented his work with the marginalized Masai people. He described the power of performance in engaging issues of child marriage, female genital circumcision and community economic development.
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United Kingdom
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Charlie Weinberg, (class of 2006), was recently appointed CEO of Safe Ground, an organization that uses performance, theatre and the arts to educate and support prisoners and their families. Two flagship Safe Ground programs -- Family Man and Fathers Inside -- help prisoners develop performances as fathers and community members.
The organization also works with prisoners to develop living strategies that can help them once they go home. The organization works to keep the lines of communication open between prisoners and the broader community, including organizing conversations that bring together prisoners, students and other community members.
Charlie reports that Safe Ground is attracting attention from the governments of other countries and is currently training prison staff in Belgium who are attracted to the use of the arts in prison education.
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Brazil
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Murilo Moscheta, (class of 2010), delivered a presentation entitled Psychologist or Artist: An invitation to think about the challenges of creating professional identity, as part of the proceedings of Psychology Celebration Week. The conference, which brought together psychology students and faculty, was hosted by FAFIBE College in the city of Bebedouro, about 100 miles outside of the sprawling city of São Paulo. Murilo discussed the challenges of creating a psychology that is at once creative, poetic and artistic, and advocates for the practice of psychology in the service of political and historical transformation.
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| Serbia |
Dejan Dimitrov, (class of 2007), served as a lead trainer in a six-month program designed to build self-esteem and critical thinking skills among Roma (gypsy) children at the Vojvodina Roma Centre for Democracy in Novi Sad. The program helped young people engage some philosophical questions about the discrimination they face: Can we change the image that others have of us? What is and what isn't discriminatory behavior? What is our responsibility as agents of cultural change? How do we protect ourselves against discrimination? Using story telling, drama and art, the program helped the young people explore the hard issues of their lives: poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, drug use, isolation and parental neglect.
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| Canada |
Rick Kotowich, (class of 2010), presented at the 4th annual Aboriginal HIV/AIDS HCV Conference held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His presentation entitled Performance Method: Creating a Way Forward Together, introduced social therapeutics as a collaborative therapeutic approach. |
| India |
Ishita Sanyal (class of 2008), founder of the Calcutta-based grassroots mental health group, Turning Point, is an avid promoter and proselytizer on behalf of a social therapeutic approach to mental health. On a subcontinent where there are only 600 practicing clinical psychologists and a devastating shortage of mental health services, Ishita advocates for a group/community-based, performance therapeutic practice everywhere she goes. She recently registered "Social Therapy India" as the official organizational platform in India.
In her group therapy work at Turning Point, Ishita has introduced theatre games. She reports how the improv work has helped her "discover new capacities of the clients, simultaneously as they discover new capacities in themselves." She describes, for example, a young woman who rarely spoke with others. "As she struggled to perform in the dramatic play," says Ishita, "and as the group showed its appreciation by enthusiastically applauding, there was a change in her performance... After some time, she began for the first time to speak with other group members."
Ishita has introduced therapy games with mothers and children struggling with rigid social roles and rules. Mothers tend to watch others play, for example, but not play themselves. Performance helps them take the stage, she reports.
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Reports from the Field is published by the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy in New York, NY.
Readers are welcome to submit reports, announcements and story ideas to Esther
Farmer, estherfarmer@hotmail.com.
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