The Healing Power of Improv

Playback Theatre and Psychodrama

by Lorrie Klosterman and illustrations by Annie Internicola, August 26, 2008

The Hudson Valley has been a cradle for many things, and among them are two forms of improvisational expression that serve as catalysts for growth and healing. Playback theatre and psychodrama—often confused with each other by the uninitiated—both evolved here, and each thrives locally and worldwide as well. Playback theatre and psychodrama both use improvisational action to create scenes, but they are quite distinct from each other. Some confusion is understandable in our region as some practitioners of playback also do psychodrama, and Boughton Place in Highland hosts monthly public sessions of both.

Key members of the founding troupe of artists who cocreated playback theatre, including Jonathan Fox, Jo Salas, and Judy Swallow, are Hudson Valley residents. “The idea of playback theatre emerged back in 1974,” Salas recalls, “when Jonathan Fox [her husband] first came up with the idea of telling real stories of real people. We were artists and believed in the unique power of experience—that something different and larger is created when you filter experience through the medium of art. We gathered a group of people to try this idea, and we experimented for a couple of years with how to actually do it. It was a collective exploration.” Salas emphasizes that, unlike psychodrama, a therapeutic technique, “Playback was not originally conceived as psychotherapy, and never has been framed as that in our view. But because playback is about personal story,” she adds, “it can be used by a therapist in a therapeutic context.”

PLAYBACK STEPS ONTO THE STAGE
“I was a theater artist when I thought of the idea,” Fox says of playback’s inception. “What interested me from my college years was oral tradition and the old stories that are told in performance—stories that are not just entertainment, but contain the ethical precepts of the people. Then I became interested in experimental theater, and was in the Peace Corps, spending a couple of years in Nepal, absorbing preindustrial culture. I learned many things there that were constructive for the community. I wanted to bring some of those things to modern day life. In playback, we’re artists who bring people’s stories to the stage, and the effect is to build community and to in some way provide a kind of community-based healing. We believe that whatever anybody chooses to tell—whether it’s about a special concern, a problem, or something as simple as a beautiful day—we can listen and have the artistry to bring out beauty and meaning for the teller and the audience.”

The Mid-Hudson Valley’s two playback groups, birthed from the original group, are Hudson River Playback Theatre in New Paltz, founded and directed by Jo Salas, and Community Playback Theatre, founded by Judy Swallow and offering public “First Friday” performances at Boughton Place. In addition, the Centre for Playback Theatre in New Paltz, of which Jonathan Fox is executive director, offers trainings and promotes playback theatre throughout the world.