September 11 to 13
Oxford
2009 Annual Conference of The British Association of Dramatherapists
Bridging cultures: sensitivities, competencies and opportunities in working across cultures.
I will be there with a workshop on Pirandello.
BLEEDING CLOWNS: SHADES OF SICILIAN SOUL IN PIRANDELLO’S FESTIVAL OF OUR LORD OF THE SHIP
The workshop is an invitation to explore some aspects of the Sicilian ethos, through one of the most poignant one-act plays by Luigi Pirandello, set in his loved-hated island. In it, a grotesque argument upon the difference between men and beasts is held on the background of an upsetting archaic rite of blood and devotion. So the philosophical and conversational attitude of our Greek ancestors confronts with a mixture of violence and sacredness, which has ever been the signature of the mafia. Nonetheless, Pirandello’s ironic gaze outlines the ambiguity of both the attitudes, revealing how they are sides of the same coin, opposite faces composing the Janus-like character that Leonardo Sciascia has called “sicilitude”. Pirandello offers us the chance to penetrate such a complex cultural and transpersonal heritage, permeating both the social exchanges and the individual psyche, through his allegoric approach, which is passionate and detached at the same time.
As a dramatherapist working in a complex and contradictory city like Palermo, I deal every day with themes of this kind. Yet there is also a personal curiosity in the idea of this workshop: having often explored Shakespeare with Sicilian people, I would like to know what it’s like exploring Pirandello with English people.
September 16 to 19
London
10 th EUROPEAN ARTS THERAPIES CONFERENCE
THE SPACE BETWEEN The potential for change.
I will be there with a paper on interpersonalrelationships in Dramatherapy.
Dramatic imagination and betweenness: how dramatherapy nurtures people’s interpersonal abilities.
As Roger Grainger maintains, Betweenness is the space that connects by separating. In order to establish relationships, people must find the right distance from others, which allows to be together yet preserving one‘s own identity. When such a space either inflates or vanishes, relationships are impossible. Dramatherapy can be an aid to reestablish a balance.
In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate how this process works, focussing upon the intimate dynamics of drama: namely, dramatic imagination and its articulations.
Taking as a starting point D.R. Johnson‘s model of dramatic interactions, I will explore the fourfold shape of dramatic imagination: as embodiment, between a person and her role; as identification, between a person and the other‘s role; as dramatic interaction, between role and role; and as everyday interaction, between person and person.
I will analyse this articulation, which on the one hand mimics psychic flows in actual relationships, and on the other hand enables the use of dramatic devices to experiment with them with no risk. It can eventually lead to a growing awareness of people‘s way of building relationships, improving people‘s ability to manage them, recovering betweenness and fostering the birth of empathy.