Writing from a dramatherapist's perspective, Roger Grainger looks at methods of researching the arts therapies, and how particular definitions of research affect our understanding and practising of arts therapies. He places approaches to research in four categories: quantitative research (which seeks to demonstrate), qualitative research (which explains by describing), action research (which explains by experiencing) and art-based research (which aims to document in an appropriate language, in this case art). Grainger evaluates all of these approaches, arguing that our theoretical or...

This study examines the underlying theatrical underpinning of dramatherapy, which is firmly based on an understanding of processes which are fundamentally theatrical: imagination, identification and catharsis. It approaches the subject systematically, arguing that the hidden psychological mechanisms which make theatre work are the same as those which operate in dramatherapy. In other words, the authors argue, it is the theatricality of dramatherapy which makes it healing.

"The Drama of the Rite" brings home the dramatic identity of ritual and the religious significance of all kinds of theatre. This book explores the characteristics of liturgical experience concentration, single mindedness, intentionality, emotional catharsis, and, above all, the quality of encounter on which personal environment depends an exploration that leads into the dramatic shape underlying both liturgy and theatre, that of the rite of passage itself. Examples are given of such rites, understood from the point of view of their theatrical nature and purpose, by looking at liturgical...