Drama Therapy in Kitezh as a Psychological Resource. 

Children who are taken into foster families in Kitezh, have in the past lived through stressful situations and crises often connected with alcoholism, drug addiction and less frequently with the death of parents. Many of our children here in Kitezh faced such problems early in their childhoods. The consequences of such emotional experiences create an absence of basic trust in adults (or anyone), as well as aggression, and a weakening of the cognitive process. A huge amount of their energy is spent trying to repress the monsters of the past, unresolved crises and conflicts with the world of adults. The reason for this is that the consciousness of children tries to block out or store away the memories of many events linked with experienced physical pain and psychological traumas, while at the same time creating a fear of coming face to face with these problems again. The child is then taken into a new family, a new school and a new peer group, who do not try to understand the nuances of his soul. The experience of Kitezh shows that the step by step psychological assistance of therapists is an essential stage after the child’s initial adaptation into their new family. The child needs to work deeply with their inner conflicts and contradictions, because a huge part of their energy is used up in repressing these conflicts. But in order to help the child, he must not be aware that it is therapy, and furthermore we hope he will be leading the therapy himself. In Kitezh, we have formed several principles as the basis of our practice, in working with children:

It is essential to gather all information, as far as is possible, about past events, recent evidence and the information given to us by parents, teachers and sometimes even older children about the behaviour and concerns of the child.

Having analysed the collected information, it is necessary to arrange tasks for he child to work on with specialists, to determine terms, and to agree on the formation of a social climate of relationships with the child during their period of therap

The preparatory stage of therapy in Kitezh can stretch from several days to several weeks, and on this basis we can avoid misunderstandings and achieve the greatest results.
In Kitezh we have already been successful in using methods including art therapy, play therapy, drama therapy and the creation of life books. The basis of our approach to work is only to guide the child indirectly by suggesting materials to the children or directing the child’s activities, posing questions such as ”What do you want to do today?”, or “ What did you find interesting today?”. This approach allows the child to tell us about his feelings, concerns, and what he has experienced, indirectly, and often unconsciously. The therapist’s job is not to interpret something from games or pictures, but only to allow the child to see a situation or experience from a new angle, allowing him to re-evaluate the situation for himself, and sometimes simply to free him from certain fixed ideas.
However it is sometimes possible to correct the child’s activities, but only in those cases when you can be absolutely certain of what it is that poses an obstacle to the further development of the child. It is combined creative activity that is the sphere of interaction in which your interference is an integral part of the authorship. Therefore the child, being involved in new game situations perceives your participation as help. This principle is at the basis of the work of Kitezh theatre, which grew spontaneously out of itself in the process of building Kitezh’s cultural environment, then becoming a centre of psychological support for the children.
It is fair to say that theatrical activities place a person in a position where he is able exchange ‘me’ for a false alias, in his role. The role has another character, sometimes even allowing them to imagine for themselves a different manner, a different upbringing, different parents.
As we know, children are involved in the suggested game situations, with the aim that they will transform into their heroes, in time taking on their manner of behavior and system of values. This is the wonderful ability of children to put themselves in the roles of others. If a child is deeply interested and involved in a theatrical production, the behaviour of the character automatically becomes a part of the child’s behavioural activity. This is a huge resource for teacher-therapists, in as far as the right role can mark out a path the leave behind their real crisis, while the appreciation of the director and the audience strengthens the feeling of success that the child gains, and gives ancillary power, but not only that:
-The role being in opposition to the performer’s own character, can become then a challenge for the child, and enriches him with new types of actions, of which the orphans usually experience a deficit .
-A role can help in the overcoming of the victim complex which often occurs in orphans- “I Can’t change anything”, “I’m weak, leave me alone”- by transforming the child from a victim into a child who takes an active position.
-A role gives the child the opportunity to be confronted with unfamiliar situations and trying different methods of working through those situations in a safe “game environment”.
-A role gives the opportunity to re-live past alarming situations, and in the same instance frees the child from the never ending struggle with those situations in their consciousness, which they had not previously been able to change.
-A role with strong characteristics can provide the performer with a way of behaving which is based on firmness of purpose and self-confidence bringing him to the understanding that it is essential never to fight out of fear, whether it be in reality of on stage, but rather for example, for happiness, love, or attention.
Playing the role in itself gives the young actor an energy of victory, a positive experience of overcoming difficulties, belief in his own strengths, a feeling of elitism and individual self-worth.
Furthermore, the stage is a wonderful way to work with the psychological repression of a child. “A character in a play is a different person, who is not shy to act or develop within themselves.” This is the position that the director-teacher puts forward for the child-orphan. And it will succeed, only under the following specific conditions:

If you have prepared interesting material for the performance for a particular child, specific to his goals, which you have set for him as a psychologist.

If the handing out of the roles is purposeful and carefully considered, when you know exactly which difficulties you will face in the process of working with children, and you are ready for their positive interpretations, as much as for yourself as for the collective.

If you can establish a creative atmosphere at rehearsals and welcome the children’s improvisations then the child can express his emotions and concerns in his own language, through which he expresses his own world, “here and now”.


And so, in the process of work, the child in his role faces his own complexes and the need to overcome them. “Otherwise he wont hear the ovation of the applause, which he so loves!”. He uses these new mechanisms to interact in the real world. These concrete examples from our experience allow us to predict the outcomes of these mechanisms.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Jesus Christ Superstar is a musical in English language that has been put on in Kitezh in three different adaptations, and three different castings. It retells the bible story of the final days of Jesus’ life. We try to move away from the religious message of the text, and try to utilise in this material the huge resource for psychological work with the inner world of the child-actor. There are three strong figures at the centre of the narrative: Jesus, Judas, and Magdalene. The image of Jesus is the image of a person purposely moving towards an intended goal, unbreakable, loving and forgiving. In the second adaptation the leading role of Christ was played by a boy named Andrei who was then studying in 7th class. The story of his life is similar to the fate of many orphans: His parents were alcoholic, and he was left to wander in search of a livelihood, money, and security. He then ended up in a children’s home, from where we welcomed him into a foster family in Kitezh. Andrei was scared of everything and trusted no one, and he sobbed violently in every lesson. His personal appearance came as a constant source of inner turmoil, and his huge victim complex had a huge affect on his activity. So much so that it seemed to him, “I will never become anything more- I am ugly, evil and weak.” And so therefore, the director suggested that Andrei played the main role. This gave him not only the opportunity to act, but to act in English language. He was shocked by this but because the occupation of actor in Kitezh had already become so prestigious, and with the support of the collective, Andrei decided to play the role. During rehearsals there were no emotional outbursts or destructive behavior, yet he constantly craved attention and feedback, asked questions such as, “What do I do now?” “Where do I go?” “Am I doing this right” He did this because he wanted to be appreciated, rather than out of a lack of confidence. The conditions of life on the street cause a child to lose the deep inner confidence in the idea that good will always triumph. Andrei arrived in Kitezh with experiences of the street and cynical relationships to the ideas of love and friendship. It is interesting that in playing the role of Jesus those situations, he was able to open up. He cried at the rehearsals, and felt the role he played deeply, changing his esteem for the actions of people, and altering his feeling of self pity. Andrei could compare the inner suffering of the character with his own experience, and found similarities between his story and the character’s, to which he could relate, because of course Jesus lived through much suffering and yet remained unbreakable. Those who saw the way he acted commented on the way he managed to keep a strong believable impression of the character for the thirty minutes on stage, with the inner impression of a focused, softhearted person, not to mention his having spoken the whole script in English. As the result of his work on this performance, Andrei became better at being confident in himself, and finding a greater sense of harmony at certain times (although not to fall under the illusion that one success can change the strengthening stereotype of behavior and reactions). Andrei’s status among the other children shot up immediately, and it changed many peoples’ perception of him. This allowed Andrei to enlist the support of his peer group, helping enormously to strengthen his inner state.
As well as this, it became clear that Andrei has a wonderful sense of rhythm, he was supple and artistic, and it seemed that theatre was for Andrei a vehicle for self-expression, giving him joy and strength. Throughout Andrei’s life in Kitezh, his theatrical activity was always a potent source of energy, at the centre of his ability for social interaction. An extra advantage of this performance was the discovery that children study English language with a much greater enthusiasm in the process of working on the performance, as far as their attention is directed away from the studying itself as they to use the language to express what they feel.
The character of Mary Magdalene, removed from the context of the Bible story, represents an image of sacrificial love, and of one person’s concern for another. To sample this model of behaviour, even on the stage, is a wonderful experience for a child. In Kitezh, the role was given to a really gifted girl whose real need was to strengthen her confidence that the world and people answer love with love, and that we must fight for the right to be happy. In the process of rehearsals Valya found a deep understanding that she continues to express as a performer. For Valentina Sanukhina the role of Magdalene became the most remarkably successful role in Kitezh, of creative self expression. She played the role tenderly, sincerely and earnestly. Already an adult studying at Moscow University, Valya has said that the most precious thing for her is the acknowledgment of her artistic success among the older Kitezhians.


Cinderella


Cinderella is a well known children’s story, full of humour and energy. It is the classic metaphor of transformation: The Chrysalis turns into a butterfly just as the ugly duckling becomes a swan. Cinderalla is excellent material for working with the remodeling of behavioural stereotypes of troubled children. The performance of Cinderella allowed us to work the children individually, each role giving energy and an example of a new manner of behaviour. The roles of Cinderella, and step mother, and the King were played by Sasha (12), Nelly (10), and Sandra (11).
Nelly is the birth-daughter of one of the foster mothers in Kitezh, and lives in a family with eight fostered children from the same family, of different ages and sexes. The fostered children from this family have a developed sense of unity, a principle of togetherness and protection of each other, and a strong attachment to their foster mother. Nelly found herself in a situation, with a separate group of children, in quite aggressive competition for the attention of her mother. Many of the children in this family were older than Nelly, and their behaviour with younger children was stereotypical of that which can be observed in a children’s home: reminiscent of an army general. Nelly fell seriously ill from time to time and stayed at home with her mother, at which point we began to observe in her a psychological reaction to her deficit in communication and the ability to single handedly seize the undivided attention of the people close to her. This constant atmosphere of competition absorbed a lot of Nelly’s strength and energy, and set her in a weak and dependent position in relation to new members of the family, namely in her sensitivity and her ability to empathise. Among the children it was essential for her to reinforce her status as an energetic member of the collective group, and also in the sphere of activity and occupation, so that she could feel successful and valued. This sphere became theatre. Through the expression of the role of the step mother which was suggested for Nelly, she was transported into a completely opposite role in the family unit. In this case the role allowed Nelly to try a new uncharacteristic model of behaviour, in a game environment. Curiously, the roles of the sisters were played by Kitezh’s older burly 9th class children. During rehearsals everyone was surprised by Nelly’s creative direction as they were given an insight into her image of an authoritative and wicked step mother. The atmosphere of celebration and humour at rehearsals allowed her to build away from family conflicts. At the premiere of Cinderella, Nelly showed herself to be bright, powerful and confident in this contrasting role, and her stream of emotion was not forced, that Nelly has a lot of energy and the capability to lead people in the necessary direction. The audience’s positive response was helpful to Nelly’s creative act and strengthened her status amongst the children; and I suppose that this role will have helped to reinforce an active position for interaction with her peers, and for problem solving. And in this way this bright role and the support of the adults expanded her range of behaviour. She now successfully acts in the theatre, dances, and writes poetry. In this child, the stereo typical “victim” behaviour changed thanks to this creative self-realization and success.
Sandra is another member of this huge foster family. She is of mixed race, a fact which became the basis of mockery and derision, as is true for many children of mixed race in Russia. Carers at the children home in which Sandra lived asked us to take her, because of the way she was treated by other children. The years that Sandra spent in the children’s home created in her the impression of herself as a victim, as well as the constant need for the reassurance of her status, and the need to provoke people by the demonstration of aggression in order to further strengthen an image of herself as a poor defenseless and lonely child, and therefore one in need of attention. The mechanism is simple: the reassurance of complicating status requires less energy than it does to change. As a rule an orphan will follow the path of least resistance, even concerning his or her own personality. Therefore in her new family, and in a situation with fierce competition with so many other children, Sandra chose a pattern of behaviour that was quietly, submissively obedient, accepting the jibes of the other children with no attempt at retaliation. Her development came to a standstill because her energy for activity and gaining new knowledge was wasted on the support of inner emotional reactions and pity for herself. In Kitezh we have been working together with her foster mother and psychologists on a system of therapy and support for Sandra, whereby we are trying to change the way she relates to people. In order for us to start work with her on this, it is essential for to have a powerful source of inner energy supporting her. The main role of Cinderella, which we suggested for her, became that source of energy. Most of the children didn’t understand why we had chosen Sandra, “Cinderella should be sweet, fair haired and beautiful.” From the point of view of many of the children, a mixed race girl could not be cast in any main role, especially as Cinderella. In this we were consciously breaking a racial stereotype. The role of the prince was played by a boy in Kitezh with whom all the girls had fallen in love. Two circumstances significantly heightened Sandra’s self-value: The esteem of her acting partner, and the opportunity to justify the hopes of those people who were important to her, by the demonstration of her creativity. In rehearsals we literally watched her gradually overcome her insecurity and her fear of looking stupid in front of the boy she was acting with. Most importantly, in the moment when she was transported into this role, began to draw comparisons between her own personal image, and that of the plain, poor Cinderella. During that time Sandra changed vastly, becoming prettier, paying attention to her appearance, and beginning to smile openly. As a result, Sandra was able to open herself to one more new sphere of activity in which she could be successful, the role allowing her to reexamine her position and relationship with the personal misfortune she had suffered.
Sasha Sinko is one of the boys from this big foster family, and represents for us the male half of this “clan” of children. It is thanks to Sasha’s stories about life in the childrens home while some of the younger Sinkos were still living there, that their foster mother Tamara chose also to take the remaining younger siblings into the family. For a long time Sasha appeared to be a very closed child, lacking motivation in his studies and in the community. However he was very talented in theatre and in drawing, and began to open himself up, when he received the reassurance and appreciation of the community, for his talents. His talents were clearly demonstrated in the course of work on Cinderella in which he played the comic role of the eccentric king. It was clear that Sasha was quite able to separate himself in reality from himself on the stage, and through researsals and improvisation he was able to show the various features of his character- splashes of creative activity and humour were mixed up with his feeling insulted and underappreciated and left him with an indifference towards people and in general. His struggle for unity became apparent and took the place of his willingness to rehearse. We could see that Sasha was struggling with a conflict between his old reactions and a new openness, which he had been creating for himself in the process of rehearsals. The fear, and the delight of conducting himself on stage became a huge new source of energy and joy for Sasha. Now in order to gain the appreciation and attention of adults and peers, Sasha knows to be bright and open. Sasha found it different to understand that when he was able to be himself, people actually paid him more positive attention. At the performance, the audience laughed more at the accent he used for the character, then the character itself. He felt so confident that he began to improvise and joke around, which was the last thing his partner expected. Every time he brought the performance to life that little bit more, making the character of the King that little bit more likable for the audience, with the additional confidence and feeling for satisfaction of an actor. The affect of the audience’s appreciation is that now Sasha agrees to take part in every performance, in main, and supporting roles. Creative activity became the key to Sasha’s personality. Whenever Sasha would fall into any kind of crisis, we would find him some kind of new occupation with which to occupy himself. For example we showed him Chinese hieroglyphs to examine, in order to improve his awful handwriting, and his handwriting quickly improved. We overcame Sasha’s academic problems (he never completed his homework tasks) with the help of drawing. Almost all of the children in the Sinko family draw very well, and some even paint well in oils, and so we suggested to Sasha that he studies only core subjects and dedicates the rest of his time to painting. As a result Sasha began to paint in water-colour and painted that which honestly represented itself to him. Here the only complication is that we cannot always stress to Sasha the importance of a path of creative resolution in a particular situation, because we can’t always define the source of the problem, and that Sasha is sometimes unable to verbalise his personal concerns. In most cases Sasha is able to rescue himself in most crises through his creativity.


Joan of Ark


Sometimes in the process of work on a play or performance, it is possible to build close trusting relationships that couldn’t otherwise be created in everyday life. Interaction in the course of work on a performance can become a valuable source of experience for children and adults.
It goes without saying that a child will allow commentary and criticism of himself, and sincere conversations with a person in whom at that moment he has complete unlimited trust. By ‘allow’, we mean the child will accept and be directed to change his behavior in line with what has been discussed. The trust built up is a huge resource for teacher-therapists in working with ‘difficult’ children. For Kitezh this forms a basic principle of our experience.
Christina, who was then 12 and a half years old, was taken into the foster family of one of our leading specialists in the field of psychology. Christina became accustomed to the way of life and the conditions of living in the orphanage. She ran away from her original foster parents a few times (as she herself explained) and of course we were apprehensive about her successful integration into Kitezh. However the demonstration of such behavior, manifesting itself partly as aggression, is the opposite side of Christina’s dynamic ,active and creative character. Having begun to reverse the destructive start of the child’s activity in one field or another, with time it is possible to strengthen an image of positive interaction with the world and the manifestation of aggression. Christina’s foster mother is one of the directors of the Kitezh theatre and in the period of building with the child, she chose the play “The Maid Of Orleans” by B Shaw. The events described in the play retell the story of the formation, struggle and demise of Joan of Arc. The directors suggested Christina for the main role with several aims in mind. To get to know each other better, to establish greater contact and creative integration, to heighten Christina’s status amongst Kitezh’s children and to allow, and also to allow Christina in the context of a game situation to live though the experience of overcoming difficulties and to work on her feeling of self confidence and her strengths. From the first rehearsals the independent stubborn image of Joan of Ark was shown to be close to Christina’s own character, and therefore in the process of the performance she proved herself to be a hard working and motivated child. She was ready to repeat any scene over and over, always giving everything to the performance, in order that her partners were able to see her true character. Work on the performance had decisive meaning for the developing relationship between mother and daughter. Christina began to see that she had been taken into the foster family of a person whom she could respect and be proud of. For a teenager it is vitally important for a mother to look over the specific behavioural traits of the child in a safe atmosphere, and notice the mechanisms for her behavior. The play was serious and tragic due to the deep empathy within the children for their characters. Joan of Arc was the first performance which the Kitezh theatre put on at the regional theatre festival, on a real stage and in front of a board of judges. Following the performance the children and adults of Kitezh took the decision to take part in further enterprises in a children’s semi-professional theatre. Playing the main role, Christina received considerable reassurance of her value in the collective as an active creative character. In the duration of rehearsals she was able to establish contact with children and feel confident in her relationships, continuing to broaden her social sphere. The play created a situation in which the foster mother and her daughter shared success in their work together which really strengthened the level of trust between them and their respect for each other. Now Christina actively continues to socialize, and take on new creative challenges, as a choreographer, games organizer, and journalist, with her mother playing a supportive role. Christina accepts help, criticism and commentary from her foster mother, who perceives her as competent in her role.
‘Master’ and ‘Master: Two Years Later And Any Old How’
How can we choose a suitable director and psychologist in the theatre, so that the children are able to break down their barriers and feel confident and creative. It is very simple: when the children begin to improvise it is clear that they begin to become interested and enthusiastic. It is true that the situation can sometimes get out of control, and the children have a tendency to mess around, but we feel that it would be wrong to abruptly cut short the flow of the children’s enthusiasm. For us in Kitezh it is important to create a situation for the child in which he is free to show the cognitive energy of his actions. If this is possible then you can transform this energy and direct it towards the necessary path. There fore, in Kitezh, any creative initiative that the children display will always receive a positive response and the support of the adult collective. Several years ago one of our children wrote the symbolic play ‘Master’. At the centre of the action is the Master and the allegorical figure ‘Delo’ (Business). The master is striving to demonstrate his diligent, motivated character. He faces various obstacles, hindered by Idleness, Holiday and Everyday). In the process of the fight against these things, for the opportunity to do something worthwhile, the Master realises that will and striving will open for him the path of creativity. As soon as the play was presented to the children, both children and adults were burning with ideas about how to put the play on stage. It was really the children’s play, the children felt completely free on the stage, literally thinking up their own comic situations and new values, and they had the freedom to give their own philosophical direction to the play. Furthermore, the play was written by an old friend of Kitezh, and therefore the children were eager to ensure that the play was well received and genuinely interesting, and all the children directed the play in one way or another. Thanks to the children’s games both musically and symbolically, the play made a great impression on the audience, and most of all on the participants, with each person putting themselves in the role of Master. Two years later, Kitezh graduate Valya Kanykhina wrote a continuation of ‘Master’: ‘Master: Two Years Later, Any Old How’.
The Master, having already completed his business and lost interest , occupied himself with the usual mundane problems of everyday life – from day to day always the same events. And now ‘Delo’, crushed by the weight of inertia and indifference, asks the Master for help. Thus he once again begins the process of overcoming his weakness and in the finale he arrives at the conclusion that he alone can overcome such difficulties, and that those who surround him can only support him in this process. The first production of the play was performed by our children.
Through the comical situations of the interaction between the characters, the philosophical intelligence of the creative process appeared. In a mode of play the children easily adopt the traits of supporting each other and overcoming their weaknesses and idleness, which traits we repeat to the children daily, so that they do not become a part of their internal experience. Quite simply, acting in plays and other productions demonstrated the way out of crises and internal conflicts, when the words of characters are easily remembered and appear in everyday colloquial speech, thus becoming aphorisms. In this way, the orphans, mistrustful of adults, can find significance in these ideas, as long as they are not thrust upon them. We simply created a situation in which the children found it interesting to act and display their abilities. For teachers and adult visitors to Kitezh this is an axiom: if adults are encouraging in their treatment of the children’s improvisation on stage, and in the life process, then children will have the possibility of discovering in themselves further strength and a desire for life – and through this to enrich their ideas of the world.
There are some kinds of theatre with various aims in mind – professional theatres are run for the creation of performances as a work of art and in accordance with this, relationships are built up between the participants in the performance, during which the director is interested not so much in the internal state of the performer, as the expression of this state in the form of the character. Kitezh’s amateur drama is run to form an atmosphere of creativity and freedom during rehearsals, in which a child is able to liberate himself, and the performance is a cause for the creation of a beneficial and therapeutic environment and, of course, a feeling of personal success or the conquering of a child’s traumatic past and the fears arising from this.
Perhaps, in the end, we must realize that no single show can change the reactions and behavior of a child on a permanent basis. If children do not receive confirmation of their own significance and successes in the course of the following months then a state of mistrust and a closed mind will return, and teachers would have to ‘re-energise’ pupils with another strong-willed effort. But however strong and deep this effort were to be, after time the sharpness will fade and the child will return to the habitual rut of his perception of reality. The energy of a child’s defeat of their fears and insecurities need to be constantly presented with new challenges, and not allowed to dry up in the whirlpool of everyday experience. If one can create a situation in which the demonstration of a child’s activities will bring order to moments of relaxation and a store of inner resources, then the child will have a chance to strengthen his cognitive outlook. Finally, being a foster parent requires the skills of a teacher, psychologist and carer; it is exactly the strengths of these specialists which allow one to succeed in work with orphans, independent of the method of therapy in use.

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