Drama Therapy in the Park: Creating New Pathways for Healing
- Atara Vogelstein, LCAT & Founder @TherapyWalks
- Apr 27
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Accessing creativity is essential for discovering possibility and healing, a throughline of service at both TherapyWalks and Creative Arts Therapy Source, psychotherapy practices supporting individuals and groups in the New York area. Creative Arts Therapies support clients in expressing unspoken parts, regulating and experiencing behaviors and emotions, experimenting with new choices, and finding new pathways for change. Through Creative Arts Therapies, such as Art, Drama, Dance/Movement, and Music Therapy, the creative process organically and intentionally accompanies the therapeutic process. The materials and sensory elements we use and present to clients and how we engage with space and meeting environments ground the therapeutic encounter.
Janeen Chasan, Art Therapist, Founder & Clinical Director of Creative Arts Therapy Source (M.A., LCAT ATR-BC, LPAT, MHC-LP) asked Atara Vogelstein, Drama Therapist & Founder of TherapyWalks (M.A., LCAT) to share how she merges Creative Arts Therapies with outdoor possibilities at TherapyWalks, meeting clients in unique and fresh ways. Atara shared the following letter. All client references remain nondescript and anonymous.
A heartfelt note from your Drama Therapist on the therapeutic twist and turns of meeting on the ground
Atara Vogelstein, MA, LCAT
Earth. It’s cold outside and we bundle up, I am aware that the air temperature is not as frozen as some of the traumas held (winter). The boy who lost his father is testing my bravery and companionship as he runs toward the big rock with a yell (fall). The client grieving her past and contemplating her future is sifting through her present as she steps in and out of the circles she drew in the dirt (still fall). The group healing relational wounds is unafraid of being seen by each other as we gather on the lawn (spring/summer). Therapy in the park, throughout atmospheric and psychological seasons, where nature softens passerby and echoes the world around, is exceedingly moving, physically and emotionally. We are stepping into more natural environments, playing with dirt, leaves, sticks, branches, benches, water, and earth, evading garbage and strangers coming too close at times, finding moments of stillness and quieter space for self. The park, a once natural and indigenous resource, is now marked with human construct. And in the bustling of New York City, provides a semi-escape from the fully concrete jungle, a small piece of carved out earth designed for human wandering and play, atop destroyed villages and native land. The systems of destruction, power, and oppression are present even here, as they are in any therapeutic encounter (Williams, 2016), and as are the systems of creation, rebuilding, and life. The park holds it all: life, death, grief, joy, loss, chaos, secrecy, revelation, relationships, change, childhood, friendships, loneliness, responsibility, exploration, seeking, finding, knowing, not knowing, direction, none… and the nature. The natural rhythm of things. A human pulse. An animal pulse. Turtles. Sports. Sweat. Comfortable clothing. Movement. Pause. Preparation. The collision of worlds natural and found, unnatural and unfounded. Maneuvering through anxiety and uncertainty. Choosing which way to go, to lead or follow, direction to shift, route to cross, place to sit, choice to stand. All of these processes naturally resembling life. As does the therapeutic encounter.
It is my job and training as a therapist, primarily, as a Drama Therapist, to notice these resemblances in relationship between myself and my clients and the environment in which we meet or create, and the experiences that clients inhabit here and in the outside world (Hodermarska, 2014). How does our relationship differ from or parallel pre-existing relationships in the client's life? How does the environment we create or find ourselves within differ from or parallel environments to which the client is accustomed? How much more can happen therapeutically when I notice, acknowledge, recreate, replicate, lean into, question, challenge, deepen these meta relational atmospheres alongside the client? One of the beautiful things about Drama Therapy is that we can do this purposefully, as well as gently, or loudly, or artfully, or angrily, or whimsically...the possibilities for entering the client's lived experience, dramatizing, narrating, playing out, moving within, sitting with, resembling, poeticizing, retelling, restorying, reenvisioning, etc. etc. etc. truly feel endless. We have the tools in Drama Therapy and Creative Arts Therapy to be with lived experience in profoundly possible ways (Jones, 2011), offering safer mechanisms for visiting dangerous territory, regulating against threat, reclaiming voice, generating movement, unlocking trauma, repositioning grief, reversing roles, stepping in and out of new, old, familiar, unfamiliar, comfortable, and uncomfortable ways of being, feeling, acting, and relating. As Mahon (2015) notes, “The patterns of the physical world also pattern our inner world" (p. 16).
When you take the Drama Therapy concept that anywhere can become the "playspace," (Johnson, 2009), any contained and agreed upon therapeutic space serves as a stage for these intrinsic processes to unfold, and all these organic relational dynamics become spotlight. The park, for instance, is serving as our playspace when I meet a client there; it is our playground, our roadmap, our office, our couch, our stage, heightened with an added freshness and freedom that comes with the benefits of being outdoors and interacting with life in motion. The client gets to decide how much to play, where and if to walk, or run, or climb, where to hide, sit down, lay down, move apart or together, in sync or flight, slowness or speed (Herman, 2015). Of course there are many factors (age, energy, mobility, psychological, emotional, cognitive, somatic states, culture, comfort, discomfort, perceived expectations, identity dynamics) and we tend to these in preparation and in real time. The nervous system gets to ground with ground, touch, fresher air, pebbles, sensation. The limbic system gets to meander and feel, freely, as the wandering body accompanies the wandering mind. New paths are visited, rest stops set, pauses pointed, old paths revisited, and rediscovered. A lost pet gets buried, for real, in the wilderness, and with it, grief unfolding in the “here-and-now” (Moreno, 1946/1985). We brave cold days, raise our voices, react to garbage and used-condom found. The ground is littered with evidence of human stepping, relationship, aloneness, oneness, and nature fighting through. The memorial inscription on the park bench becomes prompt inspiration: “What would you inscribe for a loved one?" We have benchmarks for grief, and none. The rocks and trees become figures of stability, rooting, risk-taking. Sometimes they speak to us, sometimes we ask questions, sometimes we embody them.
Jones (2007) writes, "Projection involves the placing of aspects of ourselves or our feelings into other people or things" (p. 18). Through Drama Therapy, we get to project, on purpose–through expressive therapy interventions, any object may be imbued with meaning, concretizing the otherwise intangible for a client, and providing a degree of reflection, perspective taking, containment, dialogue, or clarity. We step in tandem and apart, wiring and rewiring attachment patterns. Sometimes, I mirror, sometimes, I distance, sometimes, I witness (Haen, 2022, p. 296). I invite the client to lead, and gradually, she feels more ready. He gains confidence. We establish trust. Whether meeting outdoors, in the park, in the relative comfort of an indoor therapy space, or virtually as choice allows, I am here to accompany, support, wander, discover, play, sit, feel, create with you. As Hahn (2022) writes of healing interpersonal trauma, "...predicated on loss of the capacity to keep oneself safe, its remediation may well be located in the ability to take effective action in the world: asserting oneself, regaining ownership over one’s body, and feeling self-efficacy" (p. 298). Your path gets to change, today, your body gets to reset, your desires get to unearth, your relationships get to clarify, your sense of self gets to emerge, your agency gets to flourish, in a world that often has you believing otherwise, we are creating your world.
With love,
Atara
Atara Vogelstein (she/her)
Licensed Creative Arts Therapist
New client appointment requests:
Meet Atara. Atara is available for in-person outdoor, in-office, and virtual individual & group psychotherapy in the New York area as well as coordinated on-site workshops and professional development opportunities specializing in Trauma & Attachment, Stress & Anxiety, Grief & Loss, Relationships & Ruptures, Emotional & Behavioral Regulation, Self-Esteem & Empowerment, Interpersonal & Group Dynamics, & Communal Healing.
Meet Janeen. Janeen is available for virtual and in-person psychotherapy and workshops in Long Island supporting teens & adults through Grief and Loss, Adoptee experience, Anxiety issues, Trauma, and Chronic Medical Illness.
References and Further Reading
Garcia, A. & Buchanan, D.R. (2000). ‘Psychodrama’, in P. Lewis & D.R. Johnson (Eds.),
Current Approaches in Drama Therapy (pp. 1-51). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas
Publishing, Ltd.
Haen, C. (2023). Integrative drama therapy in the treatment of trauma: Matching aesthetic
properties to patient needs. In C. A. Malchiodi (Ed.), Handbook of expressive therapies
(pp. 287–302). Guilford.
Herman, J. (2015). Remembrance and mourning. In Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of
violence--from domestic abuse to political terror (pp. 175-195). New York, NY: Basic
Books. (Original work published 1992).
Hodermarska, M. (2014). Body knowledge and living enquiry in clinical supervision. In M.
Friedlova and M. Lecbych (Eds.), Dramaterapie, (pp. 184-197). Presented at Common
Space, 2014. Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacky University.
Johnson, D. R. (2009). Developmental transformations: Towards the body as presence. In D. R.
Johnson, & R. Emunah (Eds.), Current approaches in drama therapy (2nd ed., pp. 89–
116). Springfield IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Jones, P. (2007). Drama as therapy (2nd ed., Vol. 1). London, England: Routledge.
Jones, P. (2009). Therapists’ understandings of embodiment in dramatherapy:
Findings from a research approach using vignettes and aMSN messenger
research conversations. Body, Movement & Dance in Psychotherapy, 4(2),
95-106. Taylor & Francis: Complementary Index.
Jones, P. (2011). Dramatherapy: Five core processes, Dramatherapy, 14(1), 8-15. DOI:
Mahon, B. Z. (2015). What is embodied about cognition?, Language, Cognition and
Neuroscience, 30:4, 420-429. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2014.987791
Moreno, J. L. (1946/1985). Psychodrama, first volume (4th ed.). Beacon, NY: Beacon House.
Vogelstein, A. (2018). Drama Therapy & Empathy: An Autoethnographic Study of Empathy in
the Emerging Drama Therapist (thesis). New York University ProQuest Dissertations
Publishing.
Williams, B. M. (2016), ‘Minding our own biases: Using drama therapeutic tools to identify and
challenge assumptions, biases and stereotypes’, Drama Therapy Review, 2: 1, pp. 9–23,
doi: 10.1386/dtr.2.1.9_1
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