A new arena for drama therapy

Last fall Simon Driver, an MA student in the Department of Creative Arts Therapies, attended a Concordia coaches meeting to pitch his idea of using drama therapy on varsity athletes.

“Of course, the immediate response was, ‘You wanna do what with my athletes?’ ” Driver recalls, laughing. But after the presentation, Les Lawton, coach of the Concordia women’s hockey team, took him up on the offer: Driver had pointed out that drama therapy could help improve team communication and the overall experience of student athletes.

Lawton was looking to improve the Stingers’ team-building skills so, he says, “it was certainly something that caught my ear.” Driver’s plan also appealed to him because it would give the players an opportunity to discuss issues that weren’t directly related to hockey.

Driver worked with the team throughout the 2012-13 season; he also provided individual therapy sessions for several players. The project was sponsored by Concordia’s PERFORM Centre, which is dedicated to researching better health through prevention.

Using the techniques of drama therapy — described by the North American Drama Therapy Association as “the intentional use of drama and/or theatre processes to achieve therapeutic goals” — Driver had team members act out how they felt about certain situations. They also had to put themselves in their teammates’ shoes and approach the same scenes from a different perspective. “You embody their frustration, and it’s a way of accessing empathy,” he says. “It allows you to access some of these shared experiences and feelings.”

The ultimate goal was to get the group to a place where they could talk openly about issues that are causing conflict, and try to resolve them. “This is really important for a sports team,” Driver says. “If they can get to a place where they’re able to talk openly, without judgement, about issues that are happening on and off the ice, then you’re alleviating all that stress, that anxiety, that pent-up frustration that a lot of athletes and teams go through.”

Lawton says the Stingers really enjoyed having Driver for the season. “He was a real asset to our team, and I know most of the players really tapped into him. For a lot of them, it really smoothed things out.”

Véronique Laramée-Paquette, a veteran player who graduated this spring, says the team gained a lot from working with Driver. “It was good for bonding, because we got to see how other people think,” she says.

Laramée-Paquette also met with Driver individually: “I was stressing out because I didn’t know what I was going to do after graduation.” She says Driver helped her realize how much she loves hockey and helping people, as a teacher or a coach. “I saw that what scares me is moving away from those things. He kind of showed me, with those games, where I came from, and what I can do.”

Driver is drafting an intervention design — essentially a manual for drama therapists who want to work with sports teams — based on his experiences with the women’s hockey team and other available research. He’s also looking for a job. In the meantime, he’s coaching the Concordia cross-country team.

Stephen Snow, chair of the Department of Creative Arts Therapies in the Faculty of Fine Arts, supervised Driver during his practicum. He thinks the idea of using drama therapy with athletes makes perfect sense.

“Simon’s central thing really seems to be about group work,” he says. “How do you make a team function really well together? How do you create coherence, how do you get people to trust each other, how do you get people to feel safe to show their vulnerabilities within a space?”

Snow says most drama therapy graduate students complete their studies in hospitals and clinics around Montreal, but Driver isn’t the first to stray from the beaten path.

“To me that’s what it’s all about: learning the methodology and adapting it in a way that really works for you, in terms of your own interests.”