Healing Performance Practices

This graduate culminating project examines the intersections of theatre and the health and wellness community in the contemporary landscape of Los Angeles. In this project I link theatre and therapy's intersections from ancient rituals in Eastern Asia to psychotherapy's influence on theatrical productions. I chronologically track how new developments in both theatre and health have continued to inspire new forms of performance practice. This project examines three such performance practices and connects them to the healing work that inspired them. These three practices were all taught in Los Angeles in the fall of 2018: the Lucid Body, the Feldenkrais method, and Gaga. Through the study of introductory classes of therapeutic performance practices, interviewing the trained practitioners, and producing an autoethnographically designed workbook, I hope to offer a model to enlighten, engage, and heal communities that would otherwise not have access to alternative healing methods. The workbook introducing these studied exercises is illustrated for easy comprehension with the hope that it will become a reliable guide for teachers, teaching artists, students of theatre, and curious individuals.