ABSTRACT
This chapter explores therapeutic processes in theatre for the audience. Dramatherapists must pay attention to these processes if their work is to be effective. The chapter considers the following issues: the value of pleasure; the heightened awareness that theatre brings; projection and transference; catharsis; fusion and separation; the story: structure and insight; and the client and the therapist as audiences of each other and their potential for mutual therapeusis. Dramatherapists work with clients using drama to facilitate the therapeutic process. For a depressed person, who is anhedonic, pleasure at witnessing a performance might well be therapeutic: the libidinal energy and stimulation of theatre may well enrich an emotionally impoverished client, enlivening and lifting their spirit. Successful therapy involves a process within which the client finds a safe space to trust, depend, grow and individuate: the potential therapeutic space is a womb-like container within which the client might first have an experience of merging with and later separating from the therapist.
