MA Dramatherapy

Become a qualified dramatherapist with this unique programme at Roehampton. It offers a theoretical, experiential and clinical exploration of ritual and drama for working with others to facilitate healing and positive change in a variety of clinical settings.

The MA Dramatherapy programme at Roehampton offers a ritual theatre form of dramatherapy. Influenced by key theatrical figures and explored from anthropological, political, psychological perspectives, the programme offers a clearly structured developmental learning process mirroring the clinical application of dramatherapy at various levels.

The programme offers theatre skills, movement, working with stories and myths, Grotowski’s paratheatrical techniques, crafting theatres of the psyche, working with our own internal dramas and the use of ‘rites of passage’ within ritual theatre. There are opportunities to work with other art forms and to learn different theoretical perspectives through embodied learning.

On this programme, you will learn to facilitate an in-depth therapeutic process for a range of client groups, and devise therapeutic performances and workshops. You will also undertake an original piece of research into dramatherapy practice. The course is approved by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and leads to a nationally-recognised professional qualification.

The programme consists of three stages, which offers a clearly structured developmental process for the clinical application of dramatherapy. In Stage One, you will be introduced to basic theatre skills and use these creatively to work with established stories and characters. This progresses into an exploration of the personal identifications that we have with stories and myths, and an understanding of the deep foundations within many cultural traditions of using ritual, drama and performance for the enhancement of health.

In Stage Two, the focus moves on to employing drama and theatre processes as vehicles for exploring our own inter-personal and internal ‘dramas’.

Stage Three is where you will conduct your own piece of practical investigation or research into the literature and theory-base of dramatherapy practice. The Dramatherapy programme will provide you with a broad range of skills enabling you to pursue your own research interests across a wide spectrum of dramatherapy practice and theory.

Our research areas include individual dramatherapy in schizophrenia; perception and evaluation of therapeutic outcomes from therapist and client perspectives; the role of race, culture and gender; dramatherapy and “mentalisation” with borderline personality disorder and complex trauma; therapeutic scenarios and resistance; creativity and destructiveness; the dramatherapist; and the multidisciplinary team.

Alongside the experiential focus of the training, the programme also aims to develop the necessary understanding and reflective capacity required to practice as a professional dramatherapist. This is achieved through workshops, lecture series and clinical application seminars, as well as through assessed clinical placements.