If I had five minutes with my younger self when my life was falling apart, the first thing I’d say is – you can heal, you will heal, and you can do it your own way!! And one of the things that I wish I’d done then is drama therapy – it’s a fantastic modality to engage your body, and your creative power in the service of healing and moving.

Drew Bird is an expert in Drama Therapy. Drew is also the Head of the Creative Arts Therapies Program at the University of Melbourne, with an incredible dedication, passion as well as contribution to the field of drama therapy. I think that you’re going to love this conversation!! Drew is speaking from his own professional opinion on drama therapy.

​Full transcript:

Joe Bakhmoutski:             All right. This is Joe Bakhmoutski. Welcome to Power to Be Happy Podcast. I’m incredibly excited today because we had an incredible conversation with Drew Bird. Drew is an expert in Drama Therapy, and Drew is also the head of Creative Arts Therapies program at the University of Melbourne. And Drew is just an exemplary human being. Drew, I’m stoked to have you, welcome to the show, Drew.

Drew Bird:                           Thanks, Joe. That’s quite an opening there to live up to. Quite a welcome. But yeah, I’m very grateful to talk about Drama Therapy and its benefits.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. Beautiful Drew, listen, from the moment we first spoke, Drew, I just saw that fire in you when we talk about Drama Therapy and just, you light up and you just, you’re so passionate about it. Drew, can you tell us, like, what is it about Drama Therapy that really makes it different from everything else? Like what is it about Drama Therapy that really makes it unique?

Drew Bird:                           Okay, well, that’s a good place to start. So, well, Drama Therapy is a unique form of psychotherapy. And most traditional forms of psychotherapy use the spoken word. So, you know, a lot of reliance on talking, talking therapies. And now Drama Therapy is like a lot of the creative arts therapies like dance therapy, music therapy, and art therapy. But they don’t rely so heavily on speaking alone. But we look at what we might call nonverbal communication. So, you know, nonverbal could be through movement, it could be through image making. It could be through story making.

So in a sense, the emphasis is not solely on talking. It’s about exploring and expressing yourself verbally. So in a sense, being able to move and express oneself, you know, through gestures, it can also be a really helpful way. Not just for someone who might not be, if you like, confident with words, but actually it’s a really good way of being able to access perhaps, experiences that we might have had, like traumatic experiences where we might not even have words for.

So, the nonverbal approach in creative arts therapies lends itself to people of all ages, all types. And it’s a very creative way of exploring and expressing oneself, you know, in a very nonconventional way. So, as I said, it could be through image making, it could be through music. Obviously I’m a drama therapist. We might employ all those ideas. We might employ music, we might employ image making. But mostly we’re employing story and we’re using the body to help us express ourselves in ways that maybe words have limited.

So in a sense that we might not have much repertoire. After all, 96% of our communication is non-verbal. So finding a way to express ourselves through our body helps us potentially to access a bigger part of ourselves that may not always be available when we use words alone.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. I love that Drew. And I love how, going through expressions through your body, through something that comes up from somewhere deep within us. I feel it’s also something that helps us to, especially when you may have been impacted by trauma. It helps us to find that sense of trust within ourselves. Something that, yeah, right. Like something that you can now go off into the world and be more confident about, you know, sharing just your true thoughts, your true feelings, being more confident in the way that you lived your life, no matter what sort of things have happened to you in the past. And I love that journey. You know, I also remember our first conversation with Drew and I remember holding up this book about Drama Therapy, and I said, how much I love this book. And he said, well, I got a chapter in that. Do you remember Drew?

Drew Bird:                           Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah, you can’t make that up. And I just remember, because I remember this chapter. I had a bookmark in it, and I just remember it just stood out for me. Because that work was so personal. And this is one of those things that I love. I guess the whole mental health therapy space, if you will, is like, it’s very personal. It’s very meaningful. And it’s something that, like you want to carry through and you want to share with the world because it means something to you. Like what is your connection and how did you say you found yourself in this world of Drama Therapy, of creative expression with the focus on healing?

Drew Bird:                           That’s a good question. I mean, how did I find myself in this world? Well, I mean, I’ve always been interested in psychological health. I started my career as a social worker. So I was interested in how we enable people and how do we empower people, you know, to express themselves? And how do people find themselves, you know, when they might be traumatized or limited in some ways through illness or disability. So I’ve always had an interest in, you know, enabling and supporting and helping people find meaning in their life and overcoming oppression.

So that’s a really big feature in my mindset is that there’s a lot of oppressive forces out there that can really limit people. And how do we work with these sorts of political forces that potentially have an impact on how we are and how we live in the world. So that was where I started my journey. But I’d always had an interest in theater and, you know, from a personal experience, I’d found it very engaging, very liberating, being able to be someone else other than me. If you like, give access to parts of myself, my normal presentation of myself might not permit.

So, you know, if I was to play King Lear, you know, from Shakespeare, you know that that’s not a normal everyday role for me. That’s not part of my everyday reality. But within the dramatic reality of playing that role, of playing King Lear, I might be able to access parts of myself that are not normally available within my everyday reality. So we all have these latent parts of ourselves. These parts of ourselves that haven’t been evolved, these parts of ourselves, if you like, looking for the right conditions to become active, to become prominent in our role repertoire.

So I’ll come back to that in a minute. So there’s something about playing someone other than me that gives me access to, if you like, resources that aren’t normally available to me in my everyday role, in my everyday presentation. And it’s also very playful, you know, something about playing a king or imagining myself as a king, imagining myself with that kind of power. And earlier I talked about oppressive forces, you know, and the thing about oppression is that it can stop us having a voice. It can stop us expressing ourselves, you know?

So when I imagine myself as someone who’s more powerful, I feel like I’m trying on a persona. I’m trying to find a way of being where I can express myself, I can play with having power, I can play with being able to change things that maybe in my normal everyday presentation, I might not feel able to change. And that is also a form of oppression. So again, we might have a limited range of roles. So earlier I talked about repertoire, and a healthy person might have a role repertoire of about six or seven different roles, but particularly if we’ve experienced trauma in our lives, we might have a much more limited role capacity.

And the thing is about having a limited role capacity is it might be we are not very flexible. Yeah. The thing about having a range of roles is that we can adapt ourselves to different circumstances and different contexts, but when we’ve got a limited role repertoire, that ability to adapt and be flexible in different contexts, in different environments might be limited. Yeah. So, for example, you might find that someone acts and behaves the same in whatever context or environment that they’re in.

So in a sense, what Drama Therapy does when we play out different roles is, I feel like a very playful way of trying on roles that normally aren’t available to us. Trying out ways of expressing ourselves and widening our range of expression can also, as I said earlier, help to activate those latent parts of ourselves that haven’t been activated, we haven’t found the right conditions that, you know, so within the context of a story or a play, you know, we can try out these new roles that help us to get in touch with these parts of ourselves that we haven’t been able to access previously.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. I love Drew and I feel like, you know, it really resonates strongly with me personally, because I remember always being drawn to theater. You know, first as a kind of a clueless young man, and then kind of later on, much more recently when, you know, writing for theaters became, you know, a big part of my, I guess, you know, journey towards healing. And I kept coming back to this world, and now that I’m hearing you speak, I think it really is that ability to, you know, find a different role or expand that kind of role repertoire to give rise to parts of yourself that, yeah.

As you say, you may have been, you know, repressed or may have never even been given a chance to kind of show up, and speak and express yourself and kind of show up as part of your true self. So I guess, when we think about the types of revelations and breakthroughs that can come through, you know, Drama Therapy, what sort of changes have you seen people make, like positive changes in their life when they do go through the process of Drama Therapy?

Drew Bird:                           Well, I mean, it is a wide range. I mean, people might feel just more confident, you know, being able to express themselves, you know, not just verbally, but, but within their body. You know, they might notice that they’re more able to articulate themselves with gestures. You know, or they might even be more sensory aware of their experience. You know, they might be able to find more pleasure within the sensory world. Because what happens when the body is traumatized or frozen, is that the body’s capacity to, if you like, tune into the sensory world, might be impaired.

So, in a sense what can happen when somebody starts to develop a more sensory relationship with their experience is that it opens up all sorts of other possibilities for expressing themselves in more nuanced ways. Yeah. So, again, you know, it’s very varied and everyone’s going to respond quite differently, but certainly you might expect to see someone being able to build better relationships, you know, more secure relationships. They might be able to regulate their emotions better.

And the thing about trauma, which is predominantly what I’m focusing on today, is that when the body’s traumatized, it is often frozen. But the thing is, when someone’s experienced trauma, stress or a difficult situation might re-trigger the nervous system that can be very hard to regulate. So sometimes people have been traumatized, you know, they might struggle to regulate their emotions and that can have an impact on their relationships. So being able to regulate your emotions obviously has an impact on the skills that you can learn, the relationships that you can build.

And particularly with children who’ve been traumatized, you know, it’s really important that they can forge secure relationships, secure attachments and obviously that also helps to regulate their emotions as well. But also when they do, the capacity to regulate emotions also has a great impact on one’s capacity to learn, to respond, to be flexible, to be able to develop satisfying relationships that have meaning. Because obviously a healthy relationship is one where someone’s able to respond and reciprocate, but what can happen if someone’s got a limited repertoire that might come from being traumatized, their capacity to respond might be impaired to some extent.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             So vital Drew, and I love how you brought all those different connections together about relationships and the role repertoire, and, you know, making personal meaning from our own experience and through our sensory kind of experience. And I guess it kind of takes that idea of what we touched on earlier about, you know, trust in yourself and your body and your own experience, but also now essentially building trust in other people, and having those relationships that whether they be, you know, friends or at work or romantic, like, those relationships really start to come out and go to a different level.

Drew Bird:                           Yeah. I’m really liking what you’re saying. I think building trusting relationships is so crucial to wellbeing, but to be able to build trusting relationships requires flexibility and capacity to be able to respond capacity to be able to have nuanced responses. And trust can be significantly impaired if one hasn’t got the capacity or, or a limited ability to regulate oneself. You know, it’s that regulating the self that helps to build, as I said earlier, satisfying relationships and satisfying relationships or relationships where we can trust. Yeah. Because it’s in that trust that that helps to build a fulfilling life.

And life is about fulfilling relationships, you know, that’s how we grow, that’s how we regulate ourselves, if you like, by having meaningful relationships and trust. It is so crucial. And of course, mistrust can be the reverse side of that. It can have a terribly detrimental effect on, you know, healthy life, given the importance relationships do have in our capacity to live a fulfilling, enjoyable and engaging life. You know, and this is, you know, it’s my own research area, if I’m being really honest, is that, you know, what impairs on forging a healthy relationship.

And a lot of my more recent research has been around clowning, believe it or not. And the clown’s capacity to be able to forge a relationship with the audience is one of trust. But it’s also the ability to be vulnerable, the ability to surrender. You know, so whilst I’m talking about clowning, these are all qualities that are needed within a healthy relationship. You know, that ability to surrender, to be able to respond. That ability to trust, that ability to be able to co-create meaning, that we, together, this is what we create.

So again, I’m obviously bringing a current interest to my thinking here, but I think my interest in clowning, and the relationship with the clown in the audience has, I think there’s a lot we can learn about the importance of being vulnerable. And the thing is, when you’ve been traumatized, it can be very hard to be vulnerable because the vulnerability potentially can reignite some of those conditioned responses that have come from a traumatic experience. And actually to live a healthy and enjoyable life, vulnerability is really important. It’s part of being human. And, but again, when you have experienced trauma, you know, people’s capacity to be vulnerable, can potentially be impaired.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. Yeah. I love Drew, and it’s such a beautiful way to describe what is essentially an indicator of success on someone’s personal journey towards healing. How do you know that you’re making progress? How do you know that you’re moving in the right direction? And that is the quality of relationships that you have. Do you have more fulfilling, more meaningful, more relationships where you have that trust built in? Because after all, that’s, yeah, as you said, that’s what makes us happy. That’s what makes us more fulfilling humans. Isn’t it?

Drew Bird:                           Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you just sort of summed up, you know, beautifully, you know, this importance of relationship, and how crucial it is to a satisfying life, a life with meaning and wellbeing, you know, is so crucial. If we have a life of meaning and wellbeing that, you know, relationships are core to that. And building healthy relationships, we need trust. We need to be able to have the capacity to be responsive, the capacity to be vulnerable and the capacity to co-create, you know, these are really important, you know conditions in order for us to build that healthy relationship that that can be missing.

And I think we’re all, you know, we’re talking about everybody. We all benefit by being more vulnerable. And the thing about drama therapy is that you can play or play with being vulnerable. You can play with these differently, try on these different ways of being. And there’s something about rehearsing those ways of being that then makes parts of those ways of being available to you. Because whilst it’s a fictionalized context, we might be playing King Lear, you know, and at the end of King Lear, he’s very vulnerable, isn’t he?

His daughters are abandoning him, you know, and there’s the weather’s coming down, the storms, you know, it’s sort of a metaphor for his life, really. And he’s very, he’s an old man and vulnerable. He’s lost all his status. He’s lost all his power. But in a sense, it’s our capacity to be vulnerable that makes us human. It’s our capacity to recognize that we’re all potentially powerless really to some extent. We’re all going to be dying. We’re all vulnerable to disease as well. And it’s not easy, is it, to try and be present with that, you know? And I think King Lear is a really good illustration of that kind of shift from all that power to, you know, that kind of really feeling completely abandoned in a way.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. Exactly. And I also kind of sense that, you know, what is really important with, you know, personal progress towards healing and living a kind of a greater and more and happier and fulfilled life, is that we also kind of, we have a greater understanding and appreciation for those shared experiences that we have as humans, right. Shared as an, you know, sharing of our own struggles, of difficulties, of strife that we face sometimes in everyday lives. What you refer to as, you know, oppression as well.

But also I think the things that we have in common in terms of standing our ground and trying to find love and trying to seek connection and those things that we have in common as well as humans. And I think it’s understanding those experiences and layering them on. And sometimes, as you say, doing it in such a creative, expressive way that can help us to reconnect with those parts of ourselves that we share as part of our humanity. Drew, when you kind of think of Drama Therapy and you know, what does that actually look like and feel like when you might be in, say, your first Drama Therapy session? Like, how does it actually work?

Drew Bird:                           Yeah. Well, I guess it depends on if it’s individual or group work. But I think I’ll talk about group work. Because you know, that for me is where drama therapy really creates the really great conditions for building relationships. So a session, we might start with an opening ritual, which is sort of just a way of marking a different kind of reality, if you like, moving into a dramatic reality, which is different to an everyday reality. But we might do some theater games, which again, help us into our bodies.

It helps us to develop that playful spirit, helps us to come into relationship with one another in a very playful way. You know, it could be just a game that involves just passing a ball, even, you know, it could be a game where we pass a zip, zip, zip and then someone might go, bong, and that changes the direction of the zip. So playing theater games is really important. Sometimes they’re called warm up games. But I really try to resist using that kind of language. I think that relegates actually how important games can be in helping us to come into relationship in a very, kind of contained way.

The thing about a game is it’s repeated. Yeah. You know, we learn the pattern of the game, and that can actually help to really build confidence. Oh, you know, I know how this is going. It’s quite predictable. Some predictability can be quite important, particularly when you might be working with people who’ve had traumatic experiences, you know, where you feel like they’ve had experiences of the unpredictable. So building predictability can also help to build confidence. And from that place, people can start to develop their capacity to play.

So, then we might develop a story. In Drama Therapy, we might play with folktales, we might play with fairytales, we might play with myth. Yeah. And the thing about a story is it’s rich with symbolism. So sometimes, you know, you don’t say, I was playing a snail, you know, and I like playing with animals because animals, we don’t play animals, do we? You know, there’s something about an animal that is so far away from being my everyday self, and this is the crux of drama therapy, is it’s creating this distance that couldn’t be further away from my everyday role.

So, something about being a snail that is so different to the way I operate within my everyday reality. But playing a snail, it sort of gives me permission, if you like, to express myself in ways that I wouldn’t normally have, potentially have opportunity. You know, for example, moving slowly, I tend to rush around in my everyday life. I don’t normally have to carry my home on my back. And that’s an interesting metaphor, isn’t it? You know I’ve got this shell and you know, when I’m threatened, I can squeeze back into my shell.

Now, playing with that metaphor and that symbolism, it might be I’m exploring some potentially deep rooted and unconscious parts of myself that I’ve not explored before. So the thing is, when we are playing with symbolism, we don’t always know what we’re playing with, but it can give access to a lot of ourselves that maybe consciousness might limit. Yeah. So playing a snail, playing, you know, I’ve got this big shell on my back at any moment I can retreat into it. You know, that’s very different from my everyday persona.

Or is it, you know? It might not be so different, but there’s something about the safety of playing with a snail. I can sort of play with, oh, you know, this snail, it’s not me. It’s nothing like me, couldn’t be more different to the Drew that I know. And that in itself, it sort of opens up possibilities. There’s things I might be able to do as a snail. There’s things I might be able to express as a snail that in my everyday presentation, I might edit, you know, if you like repress or I might restrict. But playing with the snail and its playful nature, you know, I might be able to go places that my everyday personality or habits might not permit.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. I love that. I already feel like I want to play with a snail. Yes. No, you’re so right. Because It allows us to kind of unlock that part of ourselves that might be so different that it kind of shifts that whatever, like, I think what you refer to as kind of role repertoire. It might shift so way out then, you know, making a different step or behaving in a different way in life, even just a little bit, it doesn’t feel so weird. Right. Like, it kind of, that’s where we lead to, isn’t it? In a way.

Drew Bird:                           Yeah. I mean, I was just thinking, you know, these tendencies that we all have to limit ourselves, I often catch myself in everyday reality saying, oh, that’s not me. You know, no, I wouldn’t do that. No, that’s not me. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to watch that. That’s not me. You know, you know, we have all these rules about what we permit ourselves to do, these entrenched conditioned habits you know, that we might not even be aware of that limit us. But when I’m playing the snail, I’m not governed by those same rules, yet I’m operating in a dramatic reality where anything is possible.

I haven’t got the limitations that I’ve normally built into my life and my existence. And there’s something about the snail and the world of the snail that, if you like, gives permission to myself to do things I wouldn’t normally do. For example, you know, if I’m frightened, crawling up inside the shell. Just having a sense of the security of that shell. I suspect in my everyday reality, I probably wouldn’t want to be that vulnerable. I might resist acknowledging that I really would like to crawl up and hide from the world. But as a snail, that feels quite permissible because that’s the world of the snail, you know?

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Yeah. Absolutely. And it just makes me reflect on the personal experience. You know, several years ago when I was going through treatment for cancer I remember I had a lot of side effects from chemotherapy treatment, and I couldn’t play or spend as much time with my then 3-year-old son. And I just remember like when he came over one day and just wanted to play with me, and I just felt so like, exhausted from like, just this chemo fatigue, and I couldn’t play with him. And the look of disappointment on his face, it just really brought tears to my eyes.

And I remember like, there was a moment when I said to myself that I want to bring that, you know, the sense of fun into a relationship with my son for however long I have that, you know, if I am alive. And thankfully I am, as you can see, I’m here. But it’s really changed up. I took on that element of fun and just really like made that the dominant way of interacting with him. I’m always playful, I’m always ridiculous. As you can see, right. I’ve always been silly. I’m always kind of and it’s changed my relationship with him, but it also changed my relationship with life.

And I feel like that sense of playfulness and especially given some of the more difficult experiences that I might have had in my own life, it gave me an extra dimension of that sense of aliveness. The sense of just feeling exploratory, and that sense of possibility that is possible about life. And it kind of also takes away that layer of, oh, like, I have to be a professional actor, or this is something that is only reserved for people who are like professionals. Right. So I just want to take a moment to also bring up the fact that Drama Therapy, like anyone can do this, right? It doesn’t mean that you have to have some kind of artistic personality or this type of bent. Right?

Drew Bird:                           Yeah. So that’s a very good point. I mean, I’m very struck by you talking about fun, and I was thinking about fun as being a very all encompassing response to life. You know, when we’re in a fun mode or the play mode, you know, we’re very open and receptive. You know, we’re not closed. And just thinking about Drama Therapy. Yeah. You know, when I first started telling people I was a drama therapist, people assumed it was for actors. Of course. It couldn’t be more different. Really. It is for anyone.

You don’t need to have had any acting or theatrical experience. I guess what you probably need is just maybe just a bit of curiosity, you know, and a receptivity to try it. And the thing about Drama Therapy is yes, the fun can help us into our playfulness. And the thing about play, play is a wonderful resource. You know, one of the characteristics of play is flexibility and malleability, which just kind of comes back to what I was talking about earlier before, that ability to respond in a creative way. Yeah.

And the thing about play is that it helps us to master ourselves. Play is full of discovery. So, again, developing a playful self, you know, some of us, sadly, when we became adults, our playful selves might have got left behind. You know, and the thing about play is it’s a wonderful resource. So as a drama therapist, you know, we talk about drama and story, but actually it’s the play. It’s the playing really and that capacity to step into a playfulness that we might have lost, that we just need to recreate the right conditions for us to engage with.

It’s not that far away. I don’t believe that play is ever buried so deep we can’t reclaim it. But I like this idea that Drama Therapy is about reclaiming the play, reclaiming the playful self, reclaiming that kind of flexible malleable self, that sense of newness that comes from play. That’s what play is. It’s a constant discovery of something new. It’s something really amazing. I love it when I discover a new walk. And that’s very different to reading about a walk in a book, about walks. There’s something about discovering it through my own means, it’s so satisfying, rather than being told what to do.

Yeah. So, you know, obviously I’ve talked about games, you know, in Drama Therapy in different roles, but at the heart of all this, it’s just that play, you know, that willingness to try something on, to experiment, you know, oh, I’m going to experiment being a queen. I’m going to experiment being a snail. I’m going to experiment being a king. You know, what might I discover from playing all those different roles? You know? So yeah, it’s sort of that playful endeavor. And as I said earlier, play is about learning to master the self.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Reclaiming the playful self. Drew, I love that. If somebody wanted to try Drama Therapy, what would they do?

Drew Bird:                           Well, there are drama therapists out there. You know, in Melbourne there’s plenty of drama therapists and creative arts therapists. So sometimes we talk about the arts therapies and arts therapies involving drama therapists and dance therapists. So yeah, there are plenty out there in Melbourne. Obviously they all have different levels of interest in working with different people. But that would be the first port of call. There’s also ANZACATA, which is the Australian and New Zealand and Asia Creative Arts Therapies Association.

So we’ve got several hundred members there. So that’s always an access point for finding art therapists. There’s also PACFA, which is another acronym, psychotherapy counseling, something and something, something But yeah, there’s lots of acronyms. And of course we’ve got the Australian Dance Therapy Association as well. So, you know, these are all opportunities to discover the playful self, discover all those parts of you that you’ve not found words for that are still here, still waiting to be explored, still waiting to be expressed, still waiting to find an outlet to, if you like, breathe. To breathe into that kind of part of you that you’ve not breathed into.

I’m just going to say something about breathing. Because it’s really important, in Drama Therapy, breathing is really important. Not that it’s not important in the other arts therapies, but there’s something about when you play a game and you breathe, you have a much richer and much deeper experience of yourself, and the breath really helps you to connect with your emotions. So there’s something about just having your mouth just slightly open when you’re playing a game that can really help you into that experience, to deepen that experience, to potentially get in touch with those emotions, those parts of ourselves that are just waiting to be touched.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Wow. And I love how you talked about breath and kind of, you know, using breath as almost like a tool. And this is what I want to close on, Drew. I think we all are trying to have a better understanding of the way, you know, sleep and exercise and nutrition can, can help and better our mental health, but what part of self-care and perhaps self nourishment, if I might call it that, which part is not getting enough attention, do you think?

Drew Bird:                           Well, I think I have touched on it, I think this part that perhaps doesn’t get enough attention is probably our bodies, you know and our capacity to be playful in our bodies. I think most people recognize that exercise is good for us, but actually, you know, if I’m thinking about dancing and shaking and rolling. And strutting and you know, just bringing those parts of my body into play that I may have struggled to find a place for. You know, there’s all this part of me that’s longing to be expressed, these parts of me that I just need to bring into a playful relationship.

So I think the body is really key here. You know, it sort of comes back full circle. We started talking about, you know, the traditional talking therapies and how drama therapy wasn’t traditionally a talking therapy, but it’s very much moving and non-verbally working with the body. And the thing is the body doesn’t give up. Some of its, you know, the trauma’s still stored in the body and, you know, through the body we can access it, and bring it into, change our relationship with it, if you like.

So I think for me, that would be the key message to a healthy life. You know, in a sense, I’m potentially advocating, you know, a more creative relationship, a more playful relationship with our body, you know, getting it to move in ways maybe that you didn’t know it could move. You’re finding ways to express things that you might not even know what you’re expressing. But there’s real joy, I think in finding a body that can express itself. So that’s key. I think the other thing I feel is key is creativity, which is really what I’m talking about and is finding a creative and playful act that you can do consistently.

You know, I love writing. I love writing stories. I love to dance, I love to dance. You know, these are the two key things in my life. And there’s something about giving myself over to creativity every day that gives the consent to newness, consent to newness. And the thing is I went to an event recently and I was very struck by the keynote speech. And what they were saying is that if we looked at the world, if we looked outside of ourselves, if we looked at the news, the headlines. Yeah, there’s no, it’s not good news, is it? You know, it’s very sad news.

And it can be really hard sometimes to know where hope is. It can be really hard to see where there is hope in the world. And what I’ve discovered is that when I play through my creativity, I find hope. And it’s important that we don’t lose hope. It’s important that we can find a creative act that helps us to get into touch with hope. Because in a sense, it’s the hope that we need to take responsibility for in our own lives, in order to find hope in the world, because there is no hope in the news. So we, you know, to some extent, I feel we all have a responsibility to find a creative act or creative practice where we can nurture hope and bring light to the world.

Joe Bakhmoutski:             Thank you Drew, for bringing us to that hopeful place and for giving this beautiful overview of Drama Therapy, what it means, and expanding our repertoire and reclaiming our playful self. And also sharing what it looks like, what that experience might feel like, and also where to find through perhaps those associations. I’ll put those links in the show notes, but I just want to personally say thank you, Drew, from the bottom of my heart for the work that you do, but also just like the passion and the drive that you bring into this world to help more people reconnect with those parts of themselves that may have been lost or perhaps not even had access to. So thank you for what you do in the world, Drew.

Drew Bird:                           Well, thank you. And, you know, and thanks for this opportunity to share something that’s changed lives, and it’s changed my life too.