Publish and Perish, part 10: Bedtime Research

[Context: read the previous part or start from the beginning. TW: bad amateur fiction!]

For once, Gerald was relaxing before bedtime with a book — just like a normal person, he thought. Well, sort of. This wasn’t exactly reading for pleasure; it was more like research.

He looked at the cover of The Play’s The Thing: A Theatrical Approach To Therapy by Morris G. Schwartz, Ph.D. Its sole image was a simple, tasteful rendering of the classic happy-and-sad pair of drama masks.

Gerald turned to the preface and began to read.

Dear Reader:

This is a book about playing.

Everybody plays — some more readily and extensively than others, of course, with children being the acknowledged experts. Traditionally, many of us have thought of play as mindless fun — as a luxury bestowed upon kids with nothing better to do. However, research has revealed that play is absolutely critical to child development and also enhances many aspects of adults’ lives. From moving one’s body to sizing up social situations to solving problems of all kinds, playing allows people to try something, mess it up, and try again, thereby developing skills and making personal connections. We thus arrive at the idea that play should not be limited to children, but instead should be an option for people of all ages.

What does healthy, growth-promoting play look like? Fields ranging from psychology and sociology to physical education have important guidance to offer. In this book I provide a complementary perspective derived from my years of experience in two worlds: the world of therapy, and the world of theater. My overarching goal is to introduce and illustrate the concept of THEATRICAL PLAY: the use of theater-inspired games by therapists and their clients to gain insights unlikely to emerge from reflection alone. As we shall see, theatrical play includes two major subtypes: clinical play, in which clients use the safe space of a clinical setting to simulate and reimagine situations from the outside world, and integrated play, in which clients experiment with their behavior in the context of their regular lives.

People’s first impressions of theatrical play often include the misconception that its primary goal is fun, presumably due to words like “play” and “games.” While this is understandable, and while fun does ensue at times, this book adopts the theatrical perspective that to play a game is, first and foremost, to commit to an exercise where one steps outside of oneself and explores new behaviors. Such explorations often demand considerable concentration and can even be quite stressful, as is the case with desensitization training.

A second common, related misconception is the idea that theatrical play is somehow a replacement for the deep, probing conversations that therapists normally have with their clients. I assure you that it is not! But when those critical conversations spawn actionable ideas, theatrical play provides a useful framework by which clients can start converting those actionable ideas into actual actions, one small step at a time.

Are you intrigued? If so, let the games begin!

Gerald turned the page, read Chapter 1, closed the book, put it down, and turned off the light.

[Update: the story continues with part 11.]

Thanks to Jason Gresl, Evyn Hammond, and Daniel Schmekel for their suggestions on how ideas from the world of theater might apply to this story. And to Lori Gottlieb for writing a real book (Maybe You Should Talk To Someone) that helped me seek help.