1. Transformation/Performance
A Dramaturgical Methodology for the Processing of
Traumatic Memory
Sandra Philip
Edge Hill University
“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of
psychological trauma.”
Judith Lewis Herman ~ Trauma & Recovery
Performance as a Transformative Event
This research originates in personal experiences of PTSD and is
guided by a geological metaphor: that the psyche is distorted
around ley-lines; traces of historic trauma which connect and
influence public & private performances of `self’.
Through embodied dialogues between `self’ and traumatic
memory T/P enables new understandings in terms of
individuation, personal history, and cultural identity through its
practical application in performance contexts. In this creative
arena new narratives are constructed and post-traumatic world
views are both challenged and transformed.
Deconstructing the narrative
The transformative process begins with a system of applied
theatre workshops where participants are invited to give
testimonial accounts of memories and images associated with the
primary trauma, generating negative cognitions which inform the
creation of a fictional narrative; a performance text containing
intact verbatim testimonies, interwoven with positive cognitions
which challenge the maladaptive memories. The dialogue is then
dramatized by the participants through fictional characters who
exist in a fictional landscape.
Re-Writing The Story
The dialogue is thus articulated through a fictional lens, blurring
the boundaries between the real and the imagined, allowing the
`actor-participants’ a new referential perspective from which to
view the meaning of their narrative with the intention of enabling
an enhanced mastery of the primary traumatic memory. The
concluding phase of the methodological process is achieved
through the performance of this reclaimed memory-based
material, and the temporal disruption achieved through the
`planting’ of this new positive cognitive memory.
Performing `Self’
Rather than distracting the psyche away from the traumatic
experiences, T/P functions in a similar way to that of EMDR; new
internal connections: positive associations that facilitate an
empowering, liberating transition, through the process of narrative
performance.
Models of trauma intervention locate narrative constructions of the
trauma experience as central to the treating of PTSD
(Eagle., 2000; Herman., 1992; Schwartz & Prout., 1991). In T/P
this process forges critical connections through cultural identity,
testimony and performance, situating the methodology in
synergistic psychodynamic and creative process.
• Theatre, with its unique temporality, provides the performer with
a position of duality; he/she stands in the `now’ whilst re-
considering the `past’ and claiming the `future’.
• This strategic dynamic of fact and fiction functions to provide a
reflective environment for the contextualization of traumatic
wounds.
• This process seeks to `re-write’ the memory narrative through
gaining control over the pathogenic forces and organising them
into harmonious order.
• T/P disrupts sequenced memory connections through the
creative process, editing out the psychic foreign voice, allowing
space for a re-discovery of personal history spoken in a
subaltern tongue.
Edge Hill
University
Correspondence details| Sandra Philip
Edge Hill University | St. Helens Road | Ormskirk | Lancashire | UK | L39 4QP
E-Mail |philips@edgehill.ac.uk
13th European Conference on Traumatic Stress
“Trauma and its clinical pathways: PTSD and beyond”
June 6th – 9th 2013
Bologna - Italy
Establish
Safety
Re
construct
the
Story
Restore
Iden6ty
T/P
Event
Psychic
Libera6on