PSYCHODRAMA IN REHEARSALS OF MOLIERE'S TARTUFFE

Abstract

It is common knowledge among those familiar with psychodrama and sociometry that the theater was one of Moreno's earliest areas of passionate interest. While his concern with it continued throughout his career, for long-range strategic reasons he shifted his major energies to the therapeutic arena, where his ideas and methods have found ample soil for growth. Although he continued to do some work within the context of theater into the 1930s, the development of group psychotherapy and the evolution of psychodrama, sociodrama and sociometry occupied an increasingly central place in his efforts. The net result of that strategic choice has been to produce the present situation, in which psychodrama has become very largely the province of persons working in the field of mental
health, while the great majority of theater artists, students and scholars are either unaware of the existence of psychodrama or, at least, ignorant of its workings