Learning and Therapeutic Spaces in Dramatherapy and Education

This chapter will introduce the notion of dramatherapy being a liminal space. The chapter will begin with the author's previous research (Holmwood, 2014) which considered that the dramatherapy space within a school context is both ‘shifting and nebulous’, having the potential to be both educational, therapeutic and therapy. This will be considered from both a liminal and anthropological perspective. The chapter will then begin to bring together some new ideas and focus on some of the author's most recent thinking and research in relation to the therapeutic space. It will consider how the notion of the therapy space is used within the context of creative play-based approaches (Jennings, 2011) and from the perspective of ‘integral education’ (Holmwood, 2021). It will synthesize these ideas by beginning to consider the place of space in the training of dramatherapists, in a higher education setting, acknowledging that the dramatherapy student journey (Taylor and Holmwood, 2019) is not dissimilar to the client journey within the dramatherapy space, though obviously with differing intentions and outcomes. The chapter will then conclude that when we step into a liminal dramatherapy space, it can serve to be both educational and therapeutic, at the same time, in a variety of contexts and settings, dependent upon the needs of the trainee dramatherapist or dramatherapy client. The space is void of meaning until the meaning is placed upon it, due to its ability to be both amorphous and constantly shifting and an open creative space which can be explored. The dramatherapy space can be both educational, creative and therapeutic dependent upon the needs of the individual.