The use of the arts as a therapeutic tool is widespread today. Hospitals all over the country employ music, dance, and art therapies, as well as “psychodramatists” as an adjunct to more traditional methods of treatment. In addition, a small number of institutions have recently begun programs of “theatre therapy” in which patients work collectively on a performance under the supervision of trained theatre practitioners.
Psychodrama, the oldest of the therapies utilizing theatrical techniques, and the only one to possess an articulated theoretical framework, was first practiced in Vienna in 1920. Dr. J.L. Moreno, who originated the concept, writes that psychodrama developed out of what he called the “impromptu play,” which he first used with children in 1911:
I began my work with children at a time when there was only one alternative to allowing children to play spontaneously by themselves: an imitation, on the children's level, of the conventional, conserved drama [scripted works], A therapist could either watch the children at their games and interpret their behavior in terms of some ideology, like psychoanalysis, for instance, or he could teach them to rehearse and act out, like adults, a play made from, shall we say, the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.”
