About
Our goal is to train therapists to thoroughly and creatively use this innovative tool, therapy through the openess brought by playback, while taking into consideration the framework and population being treated. Furthermore, our goal is to broaden the usage of the Therapeutic Playback Theatre and assimilate it in depth into different therapeutic frameworks. We aim to create in our institute, a place for expansive, experiential and creative learning, which will assist our students in developing their skills and talents. In turn, we guide our students to become creators and facilitators of creative therapy for their clients via an experiential connection to the subject matter.
Mr. Ronen Kovalsky
Founder of the Institute for Psycotherapeutic Playback Theater
Mr. Nir Raz
Founder of the Institute for Psycotherapeutic Playback Theater
The institute was created from ten years of activity from the learning group called the Incubator. This group included therapists from different backgrounds and was the first group ever to set a goal to analytically research and develop the playback as a form of therapy on its own.
We attempt to create a parallel between the nature of the learning experience and the perception of Therapeutic Playback Theatre as a play space for joint creation of the therapist and the client
About the Therapeutic Playback Theatre
The Therapeutic Playback Theatre uses the essence of the healing power of the theatre art form, for the individual, the group and the community.
At the level of the individual, based on the story and the inner subjective content enrolled in it, the Therapeutic Playback Theatre creates a potential play space. This enables a metaphoric expression of suppressed inner subjective content. Absorbing the content and reintegrating it becomes more possible.
The continuous work of the group enables a deep inquiry on the transference relationship and the object relation systems that exist in the group. It also enables the expansion of the play space at the individual and group level and the intensification of corrective experiences of empathy and their reintegration. Within the working process, the group members constantly switch between two positions. In the first, the group member "plays the other". He explores , and practices the experience where he can reflect upon the reality from the other's perspective. Where in the second position, the group member allows "the other to play himself", using the "other" to expand his own self perspective.
This process gives ground for the group members to practice empathy and understanding of the other, while going through the aspiration for a corrective experience and the difficulties and satisfaction involved in it -all that using a dramatic action, improvisation and playing.
Furthermore , working in a group within the playback theatre intensifies processes of group assembly and cohesion, and also clarifies in a profound and creative way the processing of the group's subconscious and projection matrix.
At the community and social level, Therapeutic Playback Theatre enables the intensification of weakened and silenced voices, discovering and processing the community's myth-system, and accelerating conflict resolution processes.
Historical background and sources of inspiration
Therapeutic Playback Theatre was created from the theatrical form of Playback Theatre. This form was created in New York in 1974 by Jonathan Fox, one of the key figures in the development of Psychodrama and the author of "The Essential Moreno". This art form drew it's inspiration from Psychodrama, Psychology of the "Frankfurt School", Improvisation Theatre, The Theatre of the Oppressed of Augusto Boal, and from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed of Paulo Freire. Already as an art form.
Playback Theatre put emphasis on the combination between empathy, psychological depth, and artistic creativity; and in a sense demanded a combination of therapeutic and theatrical skills from the actors. This art spread like wildfire, and today there are hundreds of playback theatre groups around the world. In a parallel process, as Playback Theater spread, usages of this art form within a therapeutic domain with varied populations appeared. Playback Theatre is even taught as a therapeutic technique in various programs of Drama Therapy and Psychodrama.