Current Offerings

Ben offers trainings and workshops in the following therapeutic and applied theatre modalities:

Playback Theatre: An interactive theatre approach used in over 50 countries as a tool for community building, conflict transformation, education and trauma recovery.  In a Playback Theatre performance, audience members share thoughts, feelings, memories and personal stories and watch as a team of actors and musicians transform these experiences into improvised theater pieces.  Playback Theatre helps to rebuild social capital through the sharing of stories that illuminate narratives of survival, creativity and resilience.

Psychodrama:  An experiential, psychotherapy that explores the hopes, concerns or issues raised by an individual or group. Through the use of role-play, enactment and other action methods, psychodrama enables safe expression of emotion, whilst inviting fresh perspectives and insights to emerge. In the dramatic realm, participants are also able to experiment with new roles, behaviors and specific actions that might be taken in the world. By engaging affective, cognitive, relational and spiritual capacities, psychodrama encompasses a holistic approach and stimulates innovative responses to internal conflicts and real life dilemmas. 

Therapeutic Spiral Model (TSM):  An evidence-based form of psychotherapy developed in the early 1990’s by clinical psychologist Dr. Kate Hudgins.  TSM was developed as a method for addressing deep trauma, and has been used internationally for the effective treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder arising from physical/emotional abuse, addictions, childhood sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault, ethnic conflict and political torture. TSM combines aspects of object relations theory, self-psychology, transpersonal psychology, psychodrama, and expressive art therapies.

Sociodrama: An approach that engages groups and communities in spontaneous, experiential processes that stimulate self-reflection, critical thinking, dialogue, problem solving in relation to conflict and oppression.  Importantly, the dramatic enactments that take place in sociodrama allow community members to test, trial and rehearse specific actions that might be taken in the real world. Enactments also help the group to identify shared values, strengths and coping strategies.  Each enactment ends with a period of verbal sharing in which group/community members discuss and integrate the issues, ideas and emotions that arose from within the enactment.