Publications

International author Gail Sheeny wrote a chapter in her book Middletown describing Feldman’s process at a New Jersey School that was directly affected by the tragedy after Sept 11th.

Teaching through Connecting – A workbook for teachers.

A series of articles and chapters in various drama therapy books and periodicals (available upon request).

To the Moon Man with Love – A book of case histories and how-to’s for teachers and parents.

Feldman D., Sussman Jones, F., & Ward, E. (2010). “The Enact Method of Employing Drama Therapy in Schools.” In D.R. Johnson & R. Emunah (Eds.), Current Approaches in Drama Therapy, 2nd ed. (pp. 284-307). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher.

Excerpt from Chapter 16:

INTRODUCTION

ENACT History

Since 1987, ENACT has been recognized as a specialized New York City arts in education organization that excels in working with troubled youth. Reaching thousands of students each year, ENACT delivers customized workshops that employ theater and drama therapy techniques to teach vital social emotional skills to students, parents and teachers. Now in its twentieth year, ENACT has expanded its programming to offer several long-term models that respond to changing school needs. At the heart of the ENACT program lies its signature methodology. In the ENACT model, two highly-trained teaching artists partner to run three forty-five minute theater-based classroom workshops each week for a period ranging from ten weeks (short-term work) to forty weeks (full-year program). ENACT ensures that each teaching artist—with his/her particular style and skill set—is appropriately matched with each participating school—with its own distinctive culture and environment.

Over the years, ENACT has grown to serve all five New York City boroughs, working mostly in high-risk classrooms with the neediest students. With years of experience using creative drama and drama therapy techniques with students of all ages and abilities, we have come to believe that many of the children we serve in the New York City school system suffer from unrecognized trauma resulting from the effects of poverty and dangerous and unstable living environments. ENACT’s partnering schools are located in neighborhoods in which poverty has contributed to high rates of violence, crime, and drug and alcohol abuse. Seventy-five percent of ENACT’s current work is in the South Bronx, a region in which more than 40% of the residents live below the poverty line. Almost all of ENACT’s remaining work takes place in high poverty areas in Queens and Brooklyn. To date, ENACT has a cadre of 50 teaching artists trained in the ENACT method and has served over 100,000 students in the neediest neighborhoods of New York.

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The World Trade Center tragedy of September 11, 2001 had an important impact on all of this. Many students who had been affected by the disaster were not requesting counseling services. They did not want the “stigma” of being in therapy. In response, schools were worried and looking for alternative approaches that would be less stigmatizing. By this time, ENACT had earned a reputation for reaching and empowering “troubled students.” Many in New York City schools had come to see us as the “resource of choice.” As a result, more and more teachers were requesting ENACT programs in their classrooms to work with students to address their feelings of shock and fear. New York City’s Central Board of Education responded by awarding ENACT a contract to specifically address prevention and intervention in response to the effects of the disaster on students. The tragedy had given many in the school system a new understanding of trauma and its documented effects on student functioning. 

After the September 11th tragedy, ENACT continued to be the only organization in the New York City school system that used the arts and drama therapy techniques to teach social-emotional skills. The agency was honored by the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) for its “creative approach to group counseling.” Foundations that had funded more traditional arts or mental health programs in the past were now looking at ENACT and drama therapy with new eyes. More and more opportunities finally were becoming available to work in schools, aided by New York State’s decision to certify creative arts therapists and grant licenses to organizations in the field.

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ENACT’s twenty-year evolution has coincided with both the growing needs of New York City public schools and the emergence of the field of drama therapy. Recent breakthroughs in the field of social-emotional education, spearheaded by Daniel Goleman, have been instrumental in increasing awareness of the important link between social-emotional functioning and academic achievement. In fact, a bill recommending the inclusion of social-emotional education in the New York State school curriculum was signed by former New York State Governor Pataki in January 2007. Social-emotional education seems to share quite a few goals with drama therapy, such as building self-awareness, developing social awareness and relationship skills, improving self-management, fostering responsible decision-making skills, developing the capacity for empathy and effecting behavior change. We are grateful that the New York City school system has become increasingly aware of the mental health needs of all students, including inner-city youth—a group that we believe has long suffered from unrecognized trauma.

ENACT has always held true to its mission to address the needs of struggling students by engaging them at their own level of development within the school environment. Drama therapy and the theater’s powerful tools engage students in a process of emotional integration, which is especially important for the students we serve. Today, ENACT continues its work in poor urban neighborhoods with high rates of crime, drug and alcohol abuse.  In these environments, we can reach students who may never otherwise have the opportunity to access much-needed services.

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CASE STUDIES

Creating a Container for Safety and Growth: The Story of John

In 1991, we were working in a public high school’s special education department with at-risk youth known mostly for “acting out.” We were asked to work with a class once a week for a double period. This was to be a full-year program, and we felt that we needed to work toward a culminating project. We planned to develop a performance piece that expressed students’ needs and concerns.

The first day was not much of a challenge. Although students had a difficult time focusing their attention on the exercises for more than a few minutes, they seemed motivated by the process and excited about the goals. We explained that in order to meet the program’s goals we had to set up agreements. We had been told that there was a big problem with absenteeism, so we decided to include regular attendance as one of the criteria for participating in the final production that was to take place at an off-Broadway theater.

On Day two, John entered the room late, armed with a portable music player, a comb, and a lollipop in each hand. He was a very large teenager with an awkward walk and a focus that continually jumped from one thing to the next. Since John had missed the first day, he did not know about our class agreements. He continually interrupted and seemed hyperactive, unable to stand in one place for more than a minute. He was highly reactive. John had a way of upsetting everyone, including the facilitator.

As the year progressed, John continued to push the limits of the class. Each day was a struggle. John had a difficult time relating to other students and broke every rule set by the group. At the same time, he was a wonderful actor and had much to say. We wondered how we could get him to continue using his exceptional acting ability, while teaching him to contain his behavior at the same time. We spent a great deal of time redirecting and channeling his creative energy into the work, but he was still not willing to be a team player.

One day, when John was late, one of the students suggested we kick him out. I knew that John really liked the acting process and felt this would be unfair without discussing it with him first. Just then, John entered the room. We discussed our concerns with him and told him we wanted him to be in the show, but could not continue to work with him this way. “What’s going on?” we asked. John was honest. He explained that he had a really hard time controlling himself and that he would try to do so in the future. He pleaded with us to let him stay. We eventually drafted a contract and hung it on the wall. It included rules about not hitting, not cursing, being respectful, and being on time.

John agreed that after three warnings he, and anyone else who was disruptive, had to sit out of the acting circle until he was ready to participate productively with the group. If he continued to disrupt the class, he would be asked to leave. John did mess up a few times, but reigned in his own behavior and even stepped out of the circle before he was asked. He often apologized to the group and worked diligently on his lack of control. He was learning to take responsibility for his actions and began to see how these actions affected other people. He showed up every day and worked hard on improving his behavior. We continued to acknowledge him by reinforcing his positive attempts and successes. The work with John had a meaningful effect on the entire group as John's negative behavior was something to which each member could relate.

The night of the show, John stood backstage with the group. Everyone was holding hands. He had become an integral part of the group, and was saying a prayer for them all. For his work in the show, he got rounds of applause, and, in the audience discussion that followed, he was remarkable. One woman asked how everyone had worked so well as a group, and John volunteered a response, admitting, “At first it wasn't easy, but we all really tried.” The group laughed. He had come through with shining colors, empowered with new understanding about his behavior.

This case history demonstrates how a contained environment that allows for choice, expression, and creativity can help a student who is labeled “at-risk” gain personal awareness and social skills.

Empathy in the “At-Risk” Classroom: The Story of Sara

Sara was a 16-year-old girl who was placed in a school day-treatment center at a hospital in New York City because of severe emotional problems. ENACT staff were told she almost never spoke. In fact, even when she worked with her psychiatrist, Sara used puppets to communicate. Sara always came to our workshops, but sat in the back, not saying a word. She held her head down, her body was turned into itself, and her eyes shot back and forth very quickly. We rarely saw her smile, but when she did, her entire face lit up. Though she was invited to work with us just like any member of the group, she vehemently refused, although she took responsibility for her behavior by saying the agreed-upon word, “pass,” to indicate that she did not want to participate. She then sat quietly in her chair, cautiously observing the activities of others. Although we always invited Sara to participate, we respected her decision not to work. We assumed that when she was ready she would join us. Little by little, Sara participated in the group theater games and a smile broke out as she became a part of the group. She never participated in the scene work, though she watched intently.

One day, after speaking to the teacher about the students’ needs, we agreed to do a lesson that dealt with abuse. Several of the girls in the group were in abusive relationships. We carefully designed a distanced scene that allowed the group to connect at their own pace and level of safety. The scene was about two old friends, who were going out to the movies. It was a date they had been planning for a long time, because it had been repeatedly called off. Amy's boyfriend, Jimmy, was very possessive and demanded that she be with him every Saturday night. This Saturday, Amy decided to spend the night with her friend Lisa, because she needed to feel more independent from her boyfriend.

Just as the two friends were about to leave, the phone rang, and it was Jimmy. He insisted that Amy drop her plans immediately and go directly to his house. Once again Amy was swayed, afraid Jimmy would leave her. She began to run out of the house. Lisa became furious, saying, “Why do you drop our plans over him? You don’t care about me. He doesn't respect you anyway—he hits you. Why do you keep doing this?” The quarrel escalated, and the friends could not find resolution. At this point, the scene was frozen.

During the next part of the lesson, we began a question-and-answer session aimed at guiding the students to focus on relationships and feelings of dependency. Although the scene initially was developed to focus on the friends’ relationship, the students quickly chose to tune in on the issue of abuse. As they made personal connections with the characters, they were anxious to name what was going on in the scene.

We stimulated further discussion by asking students what the friend who was being abandoned by Amy should do. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Sara murmured from her chair, “I know, it happened to me.” We could barely hear her. “What?” we asked. “I know,” she announced, in a much louder voice, “it happened to me!”

In order to maintain a safe aesthetic distance for Sara, we immediately refocused the discussion on the characters in the scene. I asked Sara if she wanted to come up and role-play the friend in the scene. She jumped up immediately and said to Amy in a voice that we had never heard from her, “Don’t ever let anyone hit you. Do whatever you have to do, run away, call a hotline, but don't ever let anyone hit you!” Sara’s entire body language had changed as she spoke in an empowered voice. Everyone in the group was surprised and moved, and applauded as Sara began to smile. Students came up and hugged her. Her teacher could not believe it, Sara seemed like a different person. The school counselor was notified and continued to work with Sara.

When doing scene work with cases like Sara’s, the therapist must carefully observe student behavior. When encountering resistance and acting out, the therapist must artfully employ distance as they reflect the scene back to the students, so that they can see themselves without judgment or feelings of shame.