The theme of Beginnings, Middles and Ends was the warm up to the Theatre of Spontaneity last night and mirrored the month of May in our community very well. What are the significant elements of a beginning, a middle and an end? This was the sociodramatic question I put to the large and loving group on Sunday evening. Then we put into action and explored all three through axiodrama and sociodrama, and finished with a profound psychodrama. I felt inspired from our evening together, felt privileged to have shared in an eternal river of life and warmed up to going forward, after having an enriching experience of being in the stillness of the moment.
Being open to challenging cultural conserves was what Jacob Moreno was about, in fact, his method of working in his early years in Vienna could be said to be largely axiodramatic. He challenged a priest on the street, and he challenged actors on stage, wanting them to see things from a different perspective. His work with prostitutes enabled them to get together and lead to getting better health through access to hospitals and legal representation. Right from the beginning he was working with ethical concerns and values of communities, which is what axiodrama is about.
The Psychodrama Institute of Melbourne (PIM) began the middle of the year with Lethe Gaskin and Katrina Gaskin bringing in a new perspective with their seminar, "Psychodrama in Action in a Maori Setting" (Putting Out the Pepeha). Be your own original and unique self they said. There is something in that for all humankind.
PIM Trainees and Moreno Psychodrama members are lucky to have such a rich variety of trainers this month. Nikki Alderman, has a wealth of experience in organizational consulting and drug and alcohol counselling and supervision and loves role theory and sociometry. She is conducting both Level 2 and 3 in Term 2. In addition she is running the second elective workshop for PIM on the 26th & 27th of June, called "Keeping the Seesaw in Play: A Psychodramatic Approach to the Work/Play Balance." She is also conducting the June Theatre of Spontaneity on Sunday 27 June. During July, she is running a series of 3 hour supervision sessions over four Friday mornings, with a focus on Drug/Alcohol and other Long-Term Health Conditions.
An email from UK based Clark Baim who was coming to Australia to do some training for Berry Street, provoked an idea in me, a short burst of spontaneity - how else can spontaneity be expressed? - which resulted in a subsequent invitation from me to him, to present a seminar for PIM. Clark was well received by 16 attendees on the afternoon of Saturday 15 May, not a bad line up for a short warm up. People told me they liked him very much and benefited from his presentation. His handouts were pretty nifty too. We hope next year that he will run further training sessions with us.
Other new ongoing courses which started in February, heralding new beginnings, are all quietly motoring on, "Henry's Eating Junk Food Again - Living Through Adolescence", had its 3rd session in May and will pause after the fourth session on June 11 for two months, recommencing on the 13th of August. The "Two-Fold Path of Grief" workshop was held on 21 May, this bi-monthly group's next workshop is on 16 July. Coming up on June 4 is the second session of "Active Listening: Psychodrama in One to One Counselling and Individual Psychotherapy." If anyone wants to join in, just ask me, the groups are open to all. Julia Lau's Psychodrama personal development workshops concluded in May. Julia is running her second series in August, again on a Monday evening. All of these courses provide further opportunity for trainees and practitioners to experience the many applications of the psychodrama method, to gain further training hours and experience, and to do their own work.
Our whole program is very full this year, there is much to choose from, new people are joining in and coming to know about psychodrama, new relationships are developing and others are deepening. Someone once said, middles are about slog, hard work and sweat, the making and mixing and working together from which comes much fruit. I am glad to be in this mix, curious to see how I turn out, what I will learn, discover and be.
Some other beautiful beginnings; Patricia Green and her husband Gavin, welcomed their baby girl Celeste into the world in March. Dimitri Provin and his wife had their third child and second girl, Sasha a few weeks ago. Jenny Gould and Dianne Kearney are presenting their work as two of the co-leaders of a psychodrama team (from PIM - Level 3 Advanced Group) at Windana drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in St Kilda, at a Social Work Conference in Dublin in June. Also going overseas at the end of June is me. I am conducting the opening plenary with Peter Haworth, British Psychodrama Association president, at the BPA Conference "Actions Speak Louder" in the Roman town of Cirencester, close to the beautiful Cotswold Hills in England. Peter and I were part of a team of trainers who conducted the cross cultural training weekend in Serbia last year. Now we are working together applying sociometry in the beginning of a conference.
Sue Daniel
