Discovering the Self Through Drama and Movement


Book Description

Drama, movement and occupational therapists will appreciate this first detailed account of the method created by Marian Lindkvist 30 years ago. 30 articles spell out the theoretical base of Sesame work in movement, drama, voice, myth, ritual, and Jungian psychological theory. They also describe how the Sesame method is used in a range of settings and with a range of clients, including people with physical or learning disabilities, abused children and prisoners. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The Drama of the Gifted Child


Book Description

This “rare and compelling” (New York Magazine) bestseller examines childhood trauma and the enduring effects it has on an individual's management of repressed anger and pain. Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of readers with an answer--and has helped them to apply it to their own lives. Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their "love." Alice Miller writes, "When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb.... Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived." But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.




The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life


Book Description

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.




Theatre of the Self


Book Description




Samuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama


Book Description

An exploration of Samuel Beckett's drama, using the criteria that ensue from the works themselves, with particular attention given to the relationship between the medium and the message. This fully revised second edition includes chapters on the radioplays and film and television scripts.




Self-Speaking in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama


Book Description

This book documents the changing representation of subjectivity in Medieval and Early Modern English drama by intertextually exploring discourses of 'self-speaking', including soliloquy. Pre-modern ideas about language are combined with recent models of subject formation, especially Lacan's, to theorize and analyze the stage 'self' as a variable linguistic construct. Both the approach itself and the conclusions it generates significantly diverge from the standard New Historicist/Cultural Materialist narrative of subjectivity. Plays range from the Corpus Christi pageants to the Beaumont and Fletcher canon, with Shakespeare a recurrent focus and Hamlet, inevitably, the pivotal text.




Nation, community, self


Book Description

From the late 1960s until the present day, a significant number of women playwrights have emerged in Scottish theatre who have made a pioneering contribution to dramatic innovation and experimentation. Despite the critical reassessment of some of these authors in the last twenty years, their invaluable achievement in playwriting, within and outside Scotland, still deserves more thorough investigations and fuller acknowledgement. This work explores what is still uncharted territory by examining a selection of representative texts by Ann Marie di Mambro, Marcella Evaristi, Sue Glover, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead, Sharman Macdonald, and Joan Ure. The three macro-thematic areas of the book – the rewriting of the Shakespearean canon; the representation of female communities and minorities; and the conflicts between the self and society – find significant and paradigmatic expression in their dramas. All seven writers examined in this book have explored new theatrical methods, introduced aesthetic innovations and opened new perspectives to engage with the complexities of national, community and individual identities. This study will surely contribute to wider recognition of their achievement, so that their work can never again be described as “uncharted territory”.




The Therapeutic Powers of Play


Book Description

A practical look at how play therapy can promote mental health wellness in children and adolescents Revised and expanded, The Therapeutic Powers of Play, Second Edition explores the powerful effects that play therapy has on different areas within a child or adolescent's life: communication, emotion regulation, relationship enhancement, and personal strengths. Editors Charles Schaefer and Athena Drewes—renowned experts in the field of play therapy—discuss the different interventions and components of treatment that can move clients to change. Leading play therapists contributed to this volume, supplying a wide repertoire of practical techniques and applications in each chapter for use in clinical practice, including: Direct teaching Indirect teaching Self-expression Relationship enhancement Attachment formation Catharsis Stress inoculation Creative problem solving Self-esteem Filled with clinical case vignettes from various theoretical viewpoints, the second edition is an invaluable resource for play and child therapists of all levels of experience and theoretical orientations.




Everyday Resilience: Helping Kids Handle Friendship Drama, Academic Pressure and the Self-Doubt of Growing Up


Book Description

The way children cope with the small things in life builds a foundation for dealing with the bigger problems later on. In ‘Everyday Resilience’, you can learn how to help kids deal with increasing challenges of friendship issues, academic pressure and self-doubt. With rising mental health issues amongst children and young people, it has never been more important to nurture resilience. By focusing on key traits, Michelle uncovers the answers to the age-old questions, such as how can I help my child be more confident? What do I say when my child is rejected by friends? And how do I help a child who is struggling academically? As a teacher, and founder of Youth Excel, she has witnessed first-hand what works. And it's now time for you to learn too. Packed with every day scenarios and practical steps, ‘Everyday Resilience’ provides every parent with tools to nurture strength in young lives. Michelle Mitchell is an educator, author and award-winning speaker with a passion for supporting families. Having left teaching in 2000, Mitchell founded Youth Excel, a charity supporting young people with life skills education, mentoring and psychological services. Bringing hands-on experience in the health and wellbeing sector, she is the author of the bestselling self-help books ‘Self Harm: Why Teens Do It And What Parents Can Do To Help’ and ‘Everyday Resilience: Helping Kids Handle Friendship Drama, Academic Pressure and the Self-Doubt of Growing Up’. She lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband and two teenagers.




Private Goes Public: Self-Narrativisation in Brian Friel's Plays


Book Description

In Brian Friel's writing, the distinction between public and private is closely linked to the concepts of home, family, identity and truth. This study examines the characters' excessive introspection and their deep-seated need to disclose their most intimate knowledge and private truths to define who they are and, thus, to oppose dominant discourse or avoid heteronomy. This study begins by investigating how a number of Anglo-Irish writers publicised their characters' private versions of truth thereby illustrating what they perceived to be the space of 'Irishness'. The book then focuses on Friel's techniques of sharing his character's private views to demonstrate how he adopted and adapted these practices in his own oeuvre. As the characters' superficial inarticulateness and their vivid inner selves are repeatedly juxtaposed in Friel's texts, his oeuvre, quintessentially, displays a great unease with the concepts of communication and absolute truth.