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The listening stone performance by Whirling wheels theatre company
A short performance extract of the newly formed therapeutic theatre company “Whirling wheels” listening stone piece using dance/drama/puppets. (From the Badth innovation fund).
Donna C Jennings is the Founder and director of For the Love of a Child (FLOC) a Charity that helps vulnerable and needy children at home and abroad. Donna is an HCPC registered Dramatherapist from Roehampton University with an MA in Dramatherapy and is a cross professional Clinical Supervisor, author/speaker/trainer. She has worked extensively in clinical and voluntary settings and is passionate about helping children and their families overcome trauma loss and bereavement.
The Tiny Wand Collective: Coming Together for Drama as Therapy in India, from Within and Without.
Friday 13th December 2019 marked the formation of the Tiny Wand Collective: a fellowship of dramatherapists and other drama-based therapeutic practitioners pledging to work together to help shape the future of the field in India. In this paper, we will explore this moment in history through two autoethnographic accounts; reflecting on this process of coming together, from an Indian and a British perspective. From both within and without, we will celebrate and critique the many possibilities of dramatherapy, as well as the act of coming together to build on the past in order to foster a bright future.
Anshuma Kshetrapal will provide a perspective rooted in the dual nature of dramatherapy in India: between an indigenous, rigour-based approach to the arts as a healing space and a westernised, pedagogical form of psychotherapy practice. She will discuss the conversation between these two existing paradigms, and the tentative collaborations which grow out of this space. In this context, notions of education, standardisation, and globalisation will be explored, alongside cultural heritage, adaptability, and socio-cultural pressures. In her role as facilitator and co-organiser of the events in which the collective was formed, she will provide an insight into the process of creating a community.
Mike Clarke will instead consider the fragility of contributing to this process as someone from the outside. While acknowledging the joy of shared ideals and a love of drama as a therapeutic tool, this must be balanced with an awareness of cultural sensitivities and the postcolonial context.
Anshuma Kshetrapal is a Drama and Movement Therapist with an MA in Psychosocial-Clinical Studies and another in DMT (Sesame). She is founder of The Color of Grey Cells and co-founder of The Arts Therapists Co-Lab (TATC). Anshuma also designs curriculum and teaches certificate and diploma arts therapy courses across India.
Mike Clarke is a Sesame-based practitioner based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He currently works with West Kent Mind, alongside studying for a PhD at the University of Roehampton: researching the significance of animated comedy in framing notions of good-enough masculinity, from a psychoanalytic perspective.