A research report submitted to the Wits School of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts by coursework and research report in the field of Drama Therapy, in the faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. March 2017 / This qualitative research study examines the ways in which embodiment in drama therapy can be an effective intervention aimed at enhancing intercultural communication amongst South Africans. South Africa is a multicultural society owing to the diverse cultures people belong to. Communication is required in order for multiculturalism to succeed and peaceful coexistence to be stimulated. This study involved six participants who engaged in a series of six drama therapeutic group sessions focused on embodiment. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis the study found that the participants were able to enhance the intercultural communication amongst them as well as develop cross-cultural relationships. This research report consists of an exploration of the South African context. Thereafter embodiment, culture and communication are discussed to understand how these aspects influence the participants and their daily lives. Chapter three is the exploration of both globalisation and intercultural communication. Chapter four gives an explication of embodiment as a drama therapy approach and what embodiment offers the individual, followed by chapter five which demonstrates the methodology applied to investigate the method of embodiment. The main chapter of this study is chapter six and discusses the embodied drama therapy process and how it became a comfort zone for the participants in which they could communicate and develop meaningful relationships with the fellow participants. Chapter seven concludes and discusses the limitations and recommendations for the research. The drama therapy methodologies empowered participants and enabled them to think about themselves, their behaviour and how they communicate in a different way. It further enabled unconscious material to surface to the conscious mind, thereby evoking introspection and reflection. / MT 2018

Xie Qun. / "August 2004." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 246-256) / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

A journey in metaxis explores the facilitation of drama workshops using an adaptation of Theatre of the Oppressed, a participatory drama process used with high school students, teachers and others in the community. New possibilities of engagement open up as knowing emerges through a variety o f forms of dramatic action which are simultaneously the medium, subject and re-presentation of research. As a theatre pedagogue I explore how knowing and meaning emerge through theatre and in the interplay between my life and my work. Writing, then reading, narratives of my practice engages me in a conversation that helps me draw attention to my practice. Diverse roles and points of view of the drama facilitator begin to become apparent as these narratives speak through a spiralling process of shared experiences. Commentaries on these experiences lead to discussions of the implications of this inquiry for other forms of reflective leadership practice in drama and in education. Particular attention is placed on the role of the body and mind (bodymind) of facilitator and participants as they journey into an increasing awareness of senses, histories, the landscapes worked in, and the relationships that intertwine through the constant ebb and flow of the drama workshop. Using a framework that parallels the drama workshop I facilitate, I play with forms of texts, languages and styles to enter into the text(ure) of the worlds of facilitation so that we may come face to face with kinaesthetic and discursive experiences remembered and reconsidered. Writing my body into this exploration enables me to become mindfully aware of, and extends and transforms, my practice. I re-awaken the memory of my senses and re-connect with them in the moments of "performing" my teaching. Such poetic and expressive writing enables an evocation of the world of drama. Writing from and through a sensing body means that reflection on practice becomes not merely reporting experiences, but also celebrating and expressing the multi-vocal, multi-layered events that develop drama facilitation skills. Writing, then reading, about this process of coming to know my identity-in-process as a drama facilitator enables the interpretation, interrogation and transformation of how one becomes facilitator, "making the way as we go," (re)writing/performing our presence.

A journey in metaxis explores the facilitation of drama workshops using an adaptation of Theatre of the Oppressed, a participatory drama process used with high school students, teachers and others in the community. New possibilities of engagement open up as knowing emerges through a variety o f forms of dramatic action which are simultaneously the medium, subject and re-presentation of research. As a theatre pedagogue I explore how knowing and meaning emerge through theatre and in the interplay between my life and my work. Writing, then reading, narratives of my practice engages me in a conversation that helps me draw attention to my practice. Diverse roles and points of view of the drama facilitator begin to become apparent as these narratives speak through a spiralling process of shared experiences. Commentaries on these experiences lead to discussions of the implications of this inquiry for other forms of reflective leadership practice in drama and in education. Particular attention is placed on the role of the body and mind (bodymind) of facilitator and participants as they journey into an increasing awareness of senses, histories, the landscapes worked in, and the relationships that intertwine through the constant ebb and flow of the drama workshop. Using a framework that parallels the drama workshop I facilitate, I play with forms of texts, languages and styles to enter into the text(ure) of the worlds of facilitation so that we may come face to face with kinaesthetic and discursive experiences remembered and reconsidered. Writing my body into this exploration enables me to become mindfully aware of, and extends and transforms, my practice. I re-awaken the memory of my senses and re-connect with them in the moments of "performing" my teaching. Such poetic and expressive writing enables an evocation of the world of drama. Writing from and through a sensing body means that reflection on practice becomes not merely reporting experiences, but also celebrating and expressing the multi-vocal, multi-layered events that develop drama facilitation skills. Writing, then reading, about this process of coming to know my identity-in-process as a drama facilitator enables the interpretation, interrogation and transformation of how one becomes facilitator, "making the way as we go," (re)writing/performing our presence. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Tennessee Williams is a playwright of great psychological depth. This thesis probes some of the complexities of his work through the use of Object Relational Psychoanalysis, specifically employing the theories of Melanie Klein, W.R.D. Fairbairn and Donald Winnicott. The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and The Night of The Iguana are analysed from this theoretical stance. All of these plays display great perceptiveness into the human condition, accurately portraying many psychological relational themes. Certain Object Relational themes become very apparent in these analyses. These themes include, Dependency (especially in The Glass Menagerie), Reparation (particularly in A Streetcar Named Desire), Falsehood (notably in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Idealisation (evident in The Night of The Iguana), Honest Empathetic Relations (apparent in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Night of The Iguana) as well as Guilt, Object Loss, Sexual Guilt, and Obligation (recurring throughout these plays). It is advanced that Williams’ plays posses an honest and insightful understanding of human relations and, as such, are of contemporary value. This Thesis is not only an academic study, but also has practical applications for dramatists. With an increased understanding of the intrinsic tensions and motivations within such plays, offered by such psychoanalytic strategy, performance and staging of such work may be enhanced valuably.

This thesis explores various dilemmas in making theatre performances in the context of social disruption, trauma and death. Diverse discourses are drawn in to consider issues of body, subjectivity and spectatorship, refracted through the writer’s experiences of and discontent with making theatre. Written in a fractal-like structure, rather than a linear progression, this thesis unsettles discourses of truth, thus simultaneously intervening in debates about the epistemologies of the body and of theatre in context of the academy. Chapter 1: Methodological Anxieties Psychoanalytic theory provides a way in for investigating the dynamics of theatrical performance and its corporeal presence, by focusing on desire and its implication in the notions of loss and anxiety. The theories of the unconscious and the gaze have epistemological implications, shifting definitions of “presence” and “truth” in theatre performance and writing about theatre. This chapter tries to outline the rationale for, as well as to enact, an alternative methodology for writing, as an ethical response to loss that does not insist on consensus and truth. Chapter 2: (Refusing to) Look at Trauma This chapter examines the politics that strives to make suffering visible. Discursive binaries of public/private, dead/living, and invisible/visible underlie the politics of AIDS and sexuality. These discourses impact on the reception of Bill T. Jones's choreography, despite his use of modernist artistic processes in search of a bodily presence that aims to collapse the binary of representation (text) and its subject (being). The theory of the gaze shows this politics to be a phallocentric discourse; and narrative analysis traces the metanarrative that results in the commodification of oppositional identities, so that spectators participate in the politics as consumers. An ethical artistic response thus needs to shift its focus to the subjectivity of the spectator. Chapter 3: The Screen and the Viewer’s Blindness By appealing to a transcendent reality, and by constituting spectators as a participative community, ritual theatre claims to enact change. The “truth” of ritual rests not on rational knowledge, but on the performer’s competence to produce a shamanic presence, which director Brett Bailey embraces in his early work. Ritual presence operates by identification and belonging to a father/god as the source of meaning; but it represses the loss of this originary wholeness. Spectators of ritual theatre are drawn into an enactment of communion/community, the centre of which is, however, loss/emptiness. The claim of enacting change becomes problematic for its absence of truth. Bailey attempts to perform a hybrid, postcolonial aesthetics; but the problem rests in the larger context of performing the notion of “South Africa”, a communal identity hardened around the metanarrative of suffering, abjecting those that do not belong to the land of the father/god – foreigners that unsettle the meaning of South African identity. Conclusion: Bodies of Discontent The South African stage is circumscribed by political and economic discourses; the problematization of national identity is also a problematization of image-identification in the theatre. In search for a way to unsettle these interrogative discourses, two moments of performing foreignness are examined, one fictional, one theatrical. These moments enact a parallel to the feminine hysteric, who disturbs the phallocentric truth of the psychoanalyst through body performance. These moments of disturbing spectatorship are reflected in the works of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Her explorations into passive-aggression, shamanism and finally theatricality and the morality of spectatorship allow for an overview of the issues raised in this thesis regarding body, viewing, and subjecthood. Sensitivity to the body and its discontent on the part of the viewer becomes crucial to ethical performance.