ABSTRACT
I began this book with a discussion of a text in which a group of people exiled from their home country find the possibility of growth through putting on a play. Through this text we were able to explore some of the basic properties of dramatherapy. Then we moved on to look at how some of the contributions of psychoanalysis can help us to understand and work with dramatherapy processes. Notions of projection and introjection, potential space and the relationship between illusion and reality have been explored in different ways throughout these pages. Always the ‘me’ and ‘notme’ and the ‘as if’ of drama have been found in many guises. So let us end by looking at the place where the two worlds of illusion and reality both meet and part company in the theatre in a single dramatic form – that of Shakespeare’s epilogues. Shakespeare helps us to begin to let go, to separate from the play by means of the epilogue which is an intermediate place. It lies between the world of the play and the world ‘out there’. It is a gentle way of reminding us that the reality principle exists. What is special about Shakespeare’s epilogues is that he brings the paradox of art right into focus; he states it, makes us engage with it. He tells us that the play is an illusion, but he does it from within the play which in itself belongs to the world of illusion. Shakespeare reminds us of the illusory quality of the theatre in his famous lines spoken by Prospero after the masque in Act IV of The Tempest.
