Issues In The Practice of Dramatherapy In Nigeria.

Abstract

Drama is one of the technologies for promoting human development. Beyond its entertaining forms, its elements can equally be applied as a major aid in teaching, as psychotherapy, to promote group functioning, explore interpersonal and group problems, re-consider sociocultural and ethical dilemmas, and to cultivate a group of component skills in body vitality, through improvisation, spontaneity, imagination, empathy, playfulness, intuitiveness, emotional sensitivity, role play and several others that combine to help people to be optimally effective in marshaling the creativity needed for individual and collective adaptation in a changing world. This realisation is borne out of concern for individual advancement and societal progress.
The truism that theatre/drama perform so many entertaining, communicating, educative and a therapeutic value is not in doubt. These values most especially the therapeutic aspect is. Ithas been relegated to the background due to ignorance and enlightenment. This paper shall attempt to bring to the fore these therapeutic values embedded in drama and its necessity in a country like Nigeria. Using the role theory as propounded by Jacob Levi Moreno, a psycho dramatist and Robert Landy a dramatherapist as a springboard, it shall explore the challenges faced in the practical engagement with the patients of Neuropsychiatric hospital, Aro, Abeokuta.