Dramatherapy in Quito

The last day of our activities passed easily and with visible succes. We „played“ with a group of nine children. Although there were more interested ones to participate, we gave a clear limit and carried out the activity with little disturbance.

We started with a game to stimulate concentration and focussing – on oneself and one another. Only this game obviously showed how much the children are lacking these simple abilities, even for a few minutes. Personal attention is needed – serious and straight forward stimulation towards each child.

After we finished the introduction, while most of them stayed quietly listening, we played a game, learning to express a sentence with different emotional charge. It was good pretending it's the emotion of the mask each child had made and not a personal emotion – this makes it easier for the children to strongly express negative emotions, without feeling personally confronted or insecure.

Then we formed three groups of three children, in order to create some little scenes, making use of the masks and the emotions that they liked to express the most. Fortunately, we were three adults to give company to the three little groups. Ellen, Lily (the teacher) and me.

We tried to stimulate the children to make up a place and situation in which their scene should take place. The three girls of my group soon decided to play a typical family situation. The oldest one played the mother, the other two the daughters. The mother was in love; one daughter felt sad and the other one happy. When I asked why would they feel this way, the mother answered that she fell in love with another man, one daughter said she is happy, because her father used to beat her and now he had left the house – and the sad one felt sad because of air in her stomach - that she got when she went to carry wood for the fire in the forest.

When they started to play the situation, every girl lost herself a bit in her own situation – everyone wanted to carry out the play in HER way, not listening to the others. I told them maybe it is also an idea to create three monologues. One after the other could tell about their personal story – and in the end the public realizes that the stories are all connected.

The girls liked the idea, decided who comes first and who last, then started practicing actively. With much enthousiasm and truly emotional acting they put themselves in front of the imaginary public and practiced...

After 10 minutes, there was the REAL presentation, all the children came to sit together and we were the chosen group to start the play.

This was far more problematic than I thought. After disappearing behind the stage, after various applauses and calling for beginning, the girls were two afraid to show themselves and start... In the end, with much animation and stimulation, they finally came out of the corner – nervously presenting one or two sentences, with great shyness and confusion.

Although the content of the presentations lost much of its former liveliness, it was a big step for these children to stand in front of public – even alone – to receive an applause and appreciation of the others.

This is what creative therapy on a small scale is about. The overcoming of insecurity and fear, the surprising acknoledgement of unknown abilities and strengths.