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Breaking down Barriers and Uniting People through Art

The project I will be describing shows how theatre and drama can promote understanding and appreciation of people with disabilities. Through the medium of dramatic improvisation, school children and university students interacted with young people with disabilities (mostly Downs syndrome). Having a common aim, to produce a piece of theatre, both groups were able to work together and provide mutual support and encouragement. The outcome of the project was that children and young people were able to form a much more realistic picture of the individual with learning difficulties. Although a great deal is now being done in Greece to help those with disabilities, there is still a tendency to segregate them from the rest of the society. This has led to ignorance and prejudice, resulting in the unequal treatment of people with disabilities. The aim of this project, which is on-going, is to make some progress towards making young people aware of the talents and abilities of people with disabilities. People tend to shy away from the unknown, the strange or the unusual. By bringing young people and people with disabilities together in a collaborative project, barriers are broken down and misunderstandings revealed. Peter Slade (1995) was the first to use the term Dramatherapy in his application of drama and role play for remedial purposes in special education, as far back as 1964. As a dramatherapist and teacher in special education, I saw the potential for using drama and role play to create an environment in which children and young people can work and play with people with disabilities in a natural and creative way. Dramatherapy techniques were used to help the members of the larger group become acquainted and to promote creative interaction. This is not a Dramatherapy case study, but an attempt to show how drama and music constituted the common ground between two different groups of young people, who were able to share a mutually beneficial experience. Art was the means by which a channel of communication was established between the groups.