Overcoming Shyness Thru Drama...  
Why is Drama so Powerful?

By Clare Schrader

As a child I suffered from shyness and I spent a large portion of my adult life in hiding and in suppressing my emotions. I discovered drama in my twenties and it became a potent means to explore the many unexpressed parts of myself, stretch beyond my limitations, break out of my box, and express my true authentic spirit. And very rapidly I and my life began to change. I was at last free to choose my life instead of my life choosing me.  

Drama was a powerful forum for transforming my life. I have achieved things I would never have dreamed possible. This includes becoming a performer and playwright, receiving awards and nominations for my first play, having a play produced at the Edinburgh Festival, being featured in main stream UK women's magazines and on BBC Radio for my fire-eating act "La Dame de Flamme, the fire-eating ballerina", teaching in UK drama schools and presenting at prestigious business  conferences in Europe. For twelve years I have been helping other people transform their lives in a similar way in London through a unique combination of theater arts, personal development work and drama therapy, and now I bringing my work to the Bay Area.

The first time I saw Ian McKellen perform in a London theater I was spell bound. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I came out of the theatre feeling utterly alive, almost as if what had been expressed on the stage was more real to me than my own life. The artifice of the performance brought me to a level of awareness that I longed to experience and it was not long before this was an integral part of my life.  

You will know how powerful drama is if you know what it is to fall in love, or to give birth to a child or when something totally wonderful and unexpected happens to you. You will experience as I did that feeling of being in the pulse of life. You also know the power of it in all the messy, ugly, and chaotic events that wreak havoc and cause us immeasurable pain. As much as we hate it, these times wake us up, make us re-evaluate what is important to us, and often brings out the best in us in which we discover resources, depths and skills that we never knew we had.

As humans we are attracted to drama like filings to a magnet. The film, television and book industry thrive on our appetite for drama. The media constantly bombards us with drama, blowing up small events out of all proportion because it knows drama sells. Have you ever felt bored and wished more exciting things would happen to you and when they did, wish they hadn't? Have you ever been on a brink of adventure and knew deep inside that it was likely to lead to disaster but knew you had to do it?

The word "drama" derives from the Greek word dramatos or draein meaning "to do". Drama is about action, momentum and energy. Drama portrays life as it is. It is like life and yet not.

The healing benefits of drama are old - very old. From the beginnings of time we know that the ancients participated in dramatic rituals (which tribal societies still do to this day). The very earliest forms of theater derived from Greek Dionysian rituals in which active expression was given to the chaotic forces of life. Theater was first a healing form and a means of communicating with the gods before it became a means of entertainment. And so when drama is expressed with an intention to heal it becomes a form of psychological and sometimes even physical medicine.

So how does it do that?

Drama provides a structure in the form of a story. From ancient times human beings have told stories, stories that reveal the fabric of life and that were passed down from generation to generation, some of which eventually got written down and still survive in the form of myths. Even thousands of years later these stories still have relevance for us.

By enacting such stories we are able to gain a perspective that we aren't able to have when we're inside our own drama. We can step outside our drama and step alongside the heroes and heroines of mythology, novels and films. And when we do that something magical happens – our drama is transformed into the arena of Art. It becomes heroic and magnificent and we experience others being touched by it. All the pain and the ugliness becomes almost beautiful.

At the time it may feel like having fun, playing in the way we did as children, inhabiting different roles, but afterwards on reflection people often discover the significance of what they experienced and felt through the enactment of the drama.  

A woman attending my Open your Heart through Drama class discovered this recently when we were exploring the archetype of the Greek goddess Hera, who was classically jealous of her husband Zeus' relationships with other women. This woman was having a ball being jealous as Hera, she was being quite outrageous, and her expression of it was liberating for others and very entertaining to watch. Suddenly the jealousy which had caused a lot of suffering in her life became fun and expansive. It was no longer shameful and she was able to let go of the negative judgments that had built up in her over many years. She never dreamed she would experience this when she walked into the class. She thought she was coming to a fun evening, and that's of course is what it had been. It was the fact that it had been so much fun is what had made it so liberating for her.

And fun and laughter is another reason why expressing though drama is so powerful. Laughter releases endomorphins which is a natural analgesic and antidepressant, and when people start playing they almost automatically start laughing. It helps people to relax, opens up their hearts and brings them into connection with one another.

The work of Ernst Tolle has hit a chord at this time, urging us to live in the present moment, which is easier spoken than achieved. Drama is an art form that brings us intensely into the present. We have no other choice. One of the first things I do when someone comes into one of my sessions, is to teach them how to get out of their heads and live in their bodies. And the more you can do this the more you will live in the present and more able to experience the joy and juice of being alive. In other words you will find a way to shift away from the left side of the brain, which is desperately trying to work everything out, into the creative right brain. The creative brain too seems to have a way of connecting to a far bigger force than us - some call it the collective unconscious, some call it the universe, or living in creative flow. Whatever we call it, it enables us to live in a much more instinctive way with greater access to our inner wisdom.  And that is what Enst Tolle is talking about because when we live in the present, we have access to the infinite resources within us.

Which brings me to the most healing aspect of working through drama. This is the way in which drama communicates directly with the unconscious. If you know anything about Jungian psychology you will know how myths and fairy tales are a means of accessing the collective unconscious and the potent territory of the psyche. By exploring these stories through dramatic enactment we are directly working at the level of the unconscious and therefore too to releasing the blocks and resistances that are holding us back. This brings about catharsis and healing naturally occurs as a result of this.

Twelve years ago when I trained as a drama therapist in the UK, I knew how powerful drama therapy could be but not quite how powerful. I became fascinated by mythology and archetypes, the work of Joseph Campbell and Malidoma Some, by ritual and tribal medicine.  I trained in shamanism and rapidly my own work began to take distinctive form. And I was dazzled by the results. People began to heal and transform in major ways. They were able to let go of major traumas which had resisted classic approaches. They emerged from depression and stuckness, got out of shyness and found their true calling in life. And more than that magical things started to happen to them. They got jobs, found relationships, got married and had babies which they attributed to the work they had done with me.

I began working too in organizations and saw the same powerful effects. Stress dissolved, ideas flowed, teams came into harmony with each other. Drama was able to achieve things that the more rational head-based approaches couldn't.

These are the words of a woman in London who I have worked with recently.

"This work has taken me far beyond the play and the personality, it has taken me to a place that is even beyond Spirituality - the container within which  Spirituality arises like everything else in life - it has taken me to  a place of Life, living fully, enjoying life, enjoying being alive,  enjoying my physicality, raw power, creativity, flow, being grounded as well as the pleasure of course of playing and having fun ... But this is beyond my little story of Babeth, this is something much, much bigger than me at work, this is LIFE, the Colours of life being lived  through this system, body and the name happens to be Babeth but really the name doesn't matter ...." Babeth Payne, London

Drama is potent because enables us to celebrate the rich tapestry of human experience in all its complexity, which includes an appreciation of all it is to be human. And curiously enough for the people whose lives were so full of drama and chaos that they somewhat resembled a soap opera, instead of attracting more drama they began to experience less and their lives became more whole and balanced. My personal theory is that when we explore the "real drama" through archetypes and myths, the essence of what it is to be human, we have less need for the inauthentic dramas. They simply dissolve – and then we are free, in Babeth's words, "to live life in all its colours".

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