Masters of Their Conditions II: Intercultural Theatre, Narration and Stage Work with Patients and Healers

Abstract

What can a healer learn from theatre and performance studies? What can theatre and performance studies bring to healing practices? Both disciplines are distinct in Western societies, at times merged into miscellaneous forms of `art therapy.' What lessons can we learn from traditions that do not separate these competencies and have always integrated them as being naturally complementary? In a consultation of cultural psychiatry, both patients and healers are actively aware of various degrees of merging of art and medicine. Narration, then, cannot be limited to verbal case-history making and verbal therapeutic approaches. Bringing patients and healers on a stage and using all forms of text and performance allow for another way of (re)constructing case histories. Expanding the narrative process opens doors to exploring traditions: their origin, their apprenticeship, their performance and their transmission.