ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits and further develops the ideas and working processes of a workshop designed specifically for the 2019 ECArTE conference: Imagining Windmills: Trust, truth and the unknown in the arts therapies. The workshop Is it the trees or is it the wood? The play of projection, materiality and reciprocity in the therapeutic encounter, was seeking to test and experiment with ideas concerned with the nature of space and the selection and use of physical materials within dramatherapy practice. In developing these areas of interest and in designing and facilitating the workshop, we were struck by several recurring philosophical and theoretical themes. These informed the writing of this chapter and have been further augmented by a productive collaborative process and workshop experience.
The recurring themes include the effect of the materiality of the objects; the nature and elasticity of aesthetic space; the places of play, questions of assemblage and the constellations of people and materials within a performative space. Inspired by the main conference theme, we were also intrigued by how these might induct a sense of “truthfulness”, not in a cognitive sense, but more through a working with unexpected and unorthodox materials.
Some key theoretical ideas that inspired and underscored the original workshop are returned to, re-examined and expanded through the writing. These include the play theory of British dramatherapist, Peter Slade, and ideas from phenomenology and space as described by French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard. The writing investigates intersections between the interests and ideas of these two practitioners to forge a new dynamic amalgamation. This draws out the aesthetic sensibilities of Slade's work and the playfulness of Bachelard.
