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Not Your Father's Theatre


This week we add a new resource to the list of "Search" sites (an area I've used less for search engines than for sites that maintain lists of links to theatre oriented pages). Check out the Applied and Interactive Theater Guide, created and maintained by State University of New York Institute of Technology at Utica professor Joel Plotkin.

According to Professor Plotkin (who chairs his university's department of technical communications), the site is intended as "a resource for those who use theater techniques for other or more than arts or entertainment purposes, and for those whose theater styles incorporate other than traditional presentation styles." This would include everything from improvisation to theatre-in-education to psychodrama, and the site is open to all of it. With such an open intent the organization of the site is of necessity in a constant state of flux. Its main and currently largest area is for sites devoted to:

  • Community issues - devoted to theatre groups aimed at particular population segments or specific issues (regardless of the techniques used by the company), including such topics as AIDS, disabilities, the elderly, human rights, and substance abuse. The area shows links by company (or production) as well as by focus.

    • The rest of the site is organized by theatrical techniques or philosophies employed by the listees, such as:

  • Psychodrama and Sociodrama - primarily an area for announcements of the national association for psychodramatists, the American Association for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. Psychodrama was created by Dr. Jacob L. Moreno as a sort of psychotherapy through theatrical exploration; sociodrama expands those techniques to group situations.
  • Training and Development - lists companies who use theatrical techniques in the corporate, institutional, or organizational environment to address a number of issues effecting employers and their employees, such as diversity, harassment, disabilities, leadership, co-working, and gender.
  • Drama Therapy - which is actually an entire sub-site devoted to providing information about Drama Therapy, a technique which, according to the site, uses "drama/theater process to achieve the therapeutic goals of symptom relief, emotional and physical intergration, and personal growth."
  • Boal/Theater of the Oppressed - which combines sociodrama, improvisation, and aspects of Berthold Brecht's concept of Epic Theater.
  • Playback Theatre - uses improvisational techniques to re-enact episodes from the lives of their audience members.

    • A well organized and often beautiful site, chock full of information, this site makes a visit well worth the time for those interested in something different than what traditional theatre has to serve up.

    C U @ the Theatre!

    The copyright of the article Not Your Father's Theatre in Theatre is owned by Steven M. Alper. Permission to republish Not Your Father's Theatre in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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