Choose Your Own Path: Traversing the Multitudes of Drama Therapy

Drama therapists have vastly different professional experiences from country to region to province to state to city to town to neighborhood. The theme this year centers on the breadth of our field and the many paths available in defining our roles as drama therapists and humans. We aim to traverse the multitudes of drama therapy by:

• Exploring the numerous career paths a drama therapist can choose and the systems in which we work
• Inspecting ways in which drama therapy can continue to reinvent itself to better serve the community and create a more equitable field
• Investigating how the avenue of drama therapy promotes wellness and resiliency within the community
• Practicing cultural competency in order to guide our work, and recognize the diverse experiences of those we serve

In this year’s conference, we seek to showcase the various roles in which a drama therapist may engage. Roles that are more obvious, such as clinician, researcher, educator, and advocate, as well as roles that are lesser known, such as performer, healer, witness, and the many unlisted others.

We want to explore how the current field of drama therapy is represented:

• Why is it important for drama therapists to explore the roles in which they actively engage? And alternately, the roles in which they cannot or avoid engaging?
• What does practicing drama therapy entail and signify to our members?
• How are we advancing the use of drama therapy while challenging ourselves as a community to continue to grow and thrive?
• In what ways can the use of drama therapy assist the community in creating new paths forward?
• In a world that is forever changing, how does the role of a drama therapist continue to shift to meet the needs of clients and those executing the work?