The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 18, pp. 2941. B Pergamon Press plc, 1991. Printed in the U.S.A.
U.S.A. 0197-4556/91 $3.00 + .oO
THE DRAMATIC
ROBERT J. LANDY,
Since the first annual conference of the National
Association for Drama Therapy in 1979, the organiz-
ing profession of drama therapy has attempted to
define itself as a new form of healing and new
academic discipline. Despite significant strides in the
United States and abroad, fully developed explana-
tions of why and how drama therapy works are still
lacking. Some in the field have found full blown
models for their practice in psychology (e.g., psycho-
analysis-Irwin, 1985; development-Johnson, 1982;
Jungian archetypal psychology and object relations-
Parker-Lewis, 1989).
I think it has been important for drama therapists to
ally themselves with these and related theories in
moving toward a healthy eclecticism for the disci-
pline. Further, in doing so, drama therapists have
recognized the professional and practical necessity to
master scientifically-based practices and frameworks
essential for any mental health clinician to survive
within a clinical environment. But at this time, some
ten years down the road, I think it is imperative to
look beyond the conventional psychological models
and address the one thing that makes drama therapy
unique among psychotherapeutic disciplines-that is,
its roots in drama.
At the heart of the dramatic experience-whether
in ritual, spontaneous play, creative drama, improvi-
sation, or theatrical activity of any kind-is the
principle of impersonation, the ability of the person to
take on a persona or role. The dramatic experience is
one of paradox: I am me and not-me at the same time.
It is one of engagement and separation: I take on a
role and then I separate from it. In order to explain the
dramatic paradox, one can turn to the concept of role,
*Robert Landy is Associate Professor and Director of the Drama Therapy Program,
of The Arts in Psychotherapy.
BASIS OF ROLE THEORY
PhD, RDT”
the essential medium of the actor.
In many ways, role theory is at the root of a drama
therapy model. In drama therapy, both client and
therapist work in role and through role. Role may be,
in fact, the single most significant feature that distin-
guishes drama therapy from other forms of psycho-
therapy and healing.
Role theory has largely become the domain of
social psychologists (e.g., Goffman, 1959; Linton,
1936; and Sarbin & Allen, 1968). Others, closer to the
field of drama therapy, have contributed to role
theory, most notably J. L. Moreno (1953). Yet, the
concept, role, is primarily a dramatic one, deriving
centuries ago from the wooden scroll on which the
early actor’s lines were written. In its present form,
role is persona rather than person, character rather
than full-blown human being, part rather than whole.
It is that which holds two realities, the everyday and
the imaginative, in a paradoxical relationship to one
another. Without role there can be no drama.
It could be that there is a finite quantity of roles
that we play in everyday life and that would naturally
appear within a drama therapy situation. Furthermore,
it could be that these roles are equivalent to those that
appear and reappear throughout theatre literature and
history. If this is true, then theatre is a significant,
perhaps the most significant, model that informs role
theory as applied to dramatic forms of healing.
Yet, a theatrical understanding of role has not been
applied to building a theoretical model of drama
therapy. The purpose of this paper is to look at role
from a dramatic/theatrical point of view and to apply
this perspective to the process of drama therapy,
helping practitioners to better understand why they
New York University. He is also on the Editorial Board
29
30 ROBERT J. LANDY
work through and in role, and how the creative act of
dramatic role-playing leads to healing.
The Use of Role in Theatre
Role theory, as applied to theatre, can offer an
understanding of the types of roles available in
dramatic literature, the quality of the roles, the
function of the roles, and the level of stylization
implicit in the roles.
Role type, like the Jungian notion of archetype,
refers to universal aspects of thought, feeling, and
behavior, essential dramatic patterns that appear con-
sistently throughout dramatic literature. Examples in-
clude the tragic hero and the villain, the fool and the
wise person.
Quality refers to specific aspects of the universal
type, including physical, emotional, intellectual, moral,
and spiritual attributes. The tragic hero, for example,
might be tall or short, female or male, wise or foolish,
believer or atheist.
Function applies to the purpose of the role types
within the drama. The basic function of the villain,
for example, is to usurp power from the hero.
Function touches on issues of personal motivation and
social relationship.
Level of stylization concerns how the role is
performed in terms of its relationship to reality. At
one extreme is the presentational style of performance
that is abstract and symbolic, making no attempt at
verisimilitude. Presentational styles tend to be more
intellectual than emotional and present ideas and
universal truths rather then specific instances. Repre-
sentational styles tend to be realistic and specific,
leaning more on emotion than on cognition.
I will use the categories of type, quality, function,
and style throughout the paper as a means of organiz-
ing my thoughts about roles.
The types of roles available in the theatrical
literature have remained somewhat consistent through-
out the centuries. Theatre began thousands of years
ago in the play, ritual, and magic of people in
traditional cultures. The types of roles played in-
cluded animals, enemies, nature (sun, rain, wind,
etc.), spirits and gods. In early rites, one would
assume these roles for specific purposes: to assure, for
example, a fruitful hunt or victorious battle.
The more general psychological purpose of early
role-playing was to assert power over that which all
human beings feel powerless-birth, health, death,
and afterlife. Early role-playing expressed a longing
for transcendence both as a means of feeling powerful
and as a means of responding to the Apollonian
dictum: “Know thyself. ” For only through entering
the realm of the not-me, the role, has the human being
been able to know itself as an object. Dramatic roles
have re-presented the central theme of transcendence
as power and self-knowledge for many thousands of
years.
Around 2000 BC, early forms of passion plays
developed in the Middle East. The central character
was a god-hero whose exploits were encountered both
in the natural and supernatural worlds. In playing the
gods, the actor, like the priest, served a spiritual
function for the community, allowing others to par-
ticipate in the drama as believers, more powerful in
their identification with their deity. The actor also
served a ritual function of repeating a series of
prescribed actions and stories to insure the community
that its values and myths would remain intact.
The early Greek theatrical experiments, about 600
BC, developed around the character of Dionysus. His
role assumed many forms, including the spirit of
spring, the goat god, the god of procreation and
rebirth, and the god of intoxication and passion.
Performance took the form of the dithyramb, a rough
dance/drama in celebration of Dionysus, enacted with
abandon through movement, music, and animal sac-
rifice. But it was not until the director/playwright
Thespis extended the dithyrambic form to include
spoken dialogue and plot that we begin to see more
fully developed characters in the emerging theatre.
The role of Dionysus provides a prototype for
endless theatrical figures to come. Dionysus has come
to represent the ecstatic, the intoxicating, the irratio-
nal. We find the Dionysian role played out in the
characters of Medea, Othello, Brecht’s Baal, Williams’
Stanley Kowalski, and of course the character of
Dionysus himself, appearing in such divergent plays
as Euripides’ The Bacchae and Richard Schechner’s
Dionysus in 69.
The function of the Dionysian role is to assert the
ecstatic, primal nature of human beings. This theatre
of the id is a pre-scientific theatre, a theatre of
imagery and, in Artaud’s (1958) words, of cruelty,
one that shuns repression and flaunts the ecstatic. The
role of the actor, as we find in the manifestos of
Artaud (1958). Peter Brook (1978), and Julian Beck
(1972), is to assume a shaman-like stance, entering
into theatrical experience as if it were a fiery sacrifice,
a purification ritual. The act of performance becomes
a lifestyle, a life philosophy and religion.
 THE DRAMATIC BASIS OF ROLE THEORY
The philosopher, Nietzsche (1956), in his analysis
of Greek tragedy, saw Dionysus standing in marked
contrast to the role of Apollo, whom he saw as
representing order, rationality, beauty, and dream.
This sense of the rational Apollo is to be found
prominently throughout the history of drama. Pen-
theus, the figure of reason, is the Apollonian figure in
The Bacchae opposing Dionysus. In Shakespeare, an
example of the Apollonian figure is Hem-y IV, whose
assumption of the role of king necessitates the rejec-
tion of his Dionysian companion, Falstaff. Chekhov’s
Uncle Vanya, Odets’ Jacob (Awake and Sing), and
Peter Shaffer’s Dr. Dysart (Equus) can all be seen as
Apollo-like. Much of dramatic literature posits a
rational figure struggling against an irrational one, a
Mr. Hyde for every Dr. Jekyll. This dramatic struggle
becomes a projection of the psychodynamic battle of
id, ego, and superego, of impulse, order, and con-
science.
The function of the Apollonian role is to assert the
order, form, grace, and poetry in theatre, a transcen-
dence through beauty. Perhaps Nietzsche overstated
the rational part of Apollo in framing his fearful
symmetry of chaos and order. In the Greek drama,
Apollo appears more often as the god of prophecy, the
oracle foreseeing the future. Thus, the roles of dream-
ers and poets can be seen as Apollonian. So many
characters longing for a more hopeful future, reflect-
ing upon a romanticized past, filling their boredom
with beautiful words and images live in the image of
Apollo. The role of Apollonian actors is more behav-
ioral and less emotional than that of the Dionysian.
They would value an intellectual approach to prepar-
ing a character, mastering diction, interpretation, and
movement. Such actors might also be romantically
inclined in performance, enacting their roles with a
sense of mystery and wonder, projecting character
through stylized gesture and diction.
There are many other role types based in classical
Greek tragedy and comedy. In fact, many of the seeds
of those types that blossom forth in the great historical
periods of the Renaissance, the Restoration, and the
modem drama are planted in the theatre of the
Greeks. There we find such types as: the furies, a
subset of the Dionysian role type, the chorus, the
tragic hero(ine) and villain, the master and servant,
the fool, the eiron or ironic one, the bully, the
coward, the pariah, the charlatan, the demagogue, the
sorcerer, the go-between, the idealist, skeptic, cynic,
and victim. We also find, in the dramas of families
tom apart by tragic events, the prototypical family
31
roles of mother, father, daughter, son, and siblings.
The Roman comedy, following on the heels of
Greek drama, added such colorful role types as the
miser, the romantic lovers, the innocent, the gro-
tesque, the shrew, the courtesan, the braggart, the
adulterers, the cuckold, and the eunuch, among
others.
Each general type exemplifies certain specific
qualities when played out by a certain character. The
violent actions of the mothers, Agave and Medea, are
very different from the sorrows of Hecuba and Jo-
casta. On a larger level, the roles of women in the
early classical plays differ greatly, from the cruel acts
of Medea to the cleverness of Lysistrata and the
powerful heroism of Antigone.
With the ascendency of the church in Europe
during the Medieval period, a new form of passion
play or mystery play developed recounting the stories
of the Bible. A central protagonist is Christ and the
ritual purpose of the plays is to sustain a community
of believers. As a character, Christ somewhat resem-
bles the Greek deities in his dual nature of god/man;
yet, he also represents a new role type-that of the
savior, the suffering servant, who embodies the
Christian ideals of sacrifice and love. The quality of
the Christ role becomes highly symbolic, at times
romanticized. Although medieval actors did not de-
pend on the props and elaborate masks of the Greek
dramas, they still abstracted the god role, presenting
a universal type rather than a human being.
One further type appearing during the Middle Ages
is that of Everyman, a moral equivalent of the Greek
chorus, whose function is to provide an answer to the
ultimate issue of meaning in life. Here the answer is
a Christian one: the most value in life resides in one’s
good deeds.
The plethora of character types found in the early
days of the theatre is expanded during the next great
explosion of world drama, that of the Renaissance. It
would be difficult to argue that new roles came into
play with the theatre of the Italian cornmedia, Shake-
speare and Marlowe, Lope de Vega and Cervantes.
Yet, the earlier prototypes were further developed.
The fool became the Italian Arlecchino, a wise
trickster, and Lear’s fool, a pillar of wisdom and
pathos in his own right. The villain, in the hands of
Shakespeare, became more psychologically complex
as the playwright plumbed his motivations and inner
conflicts through soliloquy. The catharsis of Lear
seems grander than that of Oedipus. The confusions
and multifaceted roles of Hamlet seem denser and
32 ROBERT J. LANDY
richer than those of Orestes.
Perhaps the most incisive innovation during the
Renaissance was the expansion of the chorus of
Everyman to include a variety of working-class char-
acters, like the mechanicals in Midsummer Night’s
Dream, who embody both the averageness and fool-
ishness of their ordinary roles, and middle-class
characters, like the greedy merchants and usurers
exemplified by Shakespeare’s Shylock and Ben Jon-
son’s Volpone.
During the neoclassical, Restoration and Romantic
periods of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, the
types of role firmly set in the Renaissance changed
more by degree than kind. Moliere’s wit and wisdom
helped further round out the one-dimensional quality
of the commedia figure. He transformed his models
from Roman comedy into more complex figures.
With Tartuffe he takes the role of the charlatan further
than ever before, blending in a sinister quality with
the hypocrisy.
With Moliere, the role of the bourgeois becomes
prominent, especially the excess and pettiness of the
character so apt to be satirized and reviled in such
contemporary works as David Mamet’s Glengary
Glen Ross and Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Moliere’s
figure of M. Jourdain, the would-be gentleman,
becomes another stock role of the pretentious yuppie
whose attempts to acquire anything other than wealth
become ludicrous. Moliere’s characters served a sa-
tirical function, pointing out the pretensions of the
middle class. Yet, in their developing complexity,
they pointed the way to more modem realistic char-
acters whose humanity began to make new demands
on the actor.
Toward the end of the 18th century, one character
emerges as an archetypal searcher for ultimate knowl-
edge and power, that of Goethe’s Faust. This Faust
goes far beyond Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus in its depth,
scope, and poetic diction, pointing to a more modem
conception of a belief in the endlessly creative,
inquisitive, and assertive nature of the individual
whose quest, material and/or spiritual, is all con-
suming.
The other side of the Faust role is that of Mephis-
topheles, the villain as tempter, the executioner as
inquisitor. The role finds a powerful modem incama-
tion in Heinrich Mann’s novel, Mephisto, translated
into a highly theatrical film-the story of an actor,
based on a real-life character, who renounces all
morality, to the point of embracing Nazism, in order
to maintain his professional role.
To a lesser extent, Ibsen picked up on the roman-
tic, Faustian theme, creating early characters like the
fiery preacher, Brand, the puckish Peer Gynt, and
John Gabriel Borkman, the defeated financier. Yet,
Ibsen was moving beyond romanticism toward a new
kind of character that would dominate the theatre of
the 20th century. In creating the likes of Nora
Helmer, Dr. Stockman, and Hedda Gabler, Ibsen
provided the early prototypes of realism in modem
drama.
As modem drama leapt out of the 19th century, the
role developed greater humanity and complexity,
temporarily halting the earlier stylized conventions of
choral ode, aside, and soliloquy. The function of the
realistic character was to present to the audience an
illusion of reality. The suffocating drawing room of
Nora Helmer appeared to be that of many women in
the audience. The role of Nora became suddenly
immediate, real, close to the bone. The role was no
longer simply a fiction, but an urgent fact of social
and psychological life. In presentational forms of
theatre, the gods spoke but remained remote. With the
new representational forms, the gods were in their
heavens, silent; it became time for the real people to
speak.
With realism came a new style of acting born in
Russia with the work of Stanislavski (1936), most
notable as director of the plays of Chekhov. The new
acting depended on an emotional and psychological
commitment to a role. In some cases, as in the
Strasberg method, actors began to merge with the
roles, committing extreme forms of identification. If
the roles demanded fatigue, the actors would not
sleep. If the roles demanded murder, the actors would
search inside themselves to discover their murderous
impulses.
A counter tradition has sprung up in modem
drama, that of expressionism and absurdism, repre-
sented in Europe by the likes of Pirandello, Ionesco,
Beckett, and Brecht. The characters created become
less psychological and human, more political, styl-
ized, and abstract. The expressionist form, notably
represented by Brecht, presents role in classical
terms. The actor literally and figuratively takes on a
mask to portray a type of character. In portraying
moral and political dualities, Brecht serves up Shen
Te, the whore with the heart of gold, who must take
on the mask of Shui Ta, the hard-nosed capitalist, in
order to survive exploitation and poverty. The dual
nature of Shen Te/Shui Ta presents the internal moral
dilemma facing modem individuals, their contradic-
 THE DRAMATIC BASIS OF ROLE THEORY
tory roles of idealist/realist, exploited/exploiter, weak/
powerful endlessly at war. The dualistic Brechtian
protagonist also embodies the role type of the dis-
guised one who must take on a mask to allow another
side of the personality to surface.
The roles we find in Brechtian theatre are many
variations on the old types: Dionysus as Baal, Apollo
as Galileo, the braggart and fool as Arturo Ui, the
ironic one as the Widow Begbick, Jesus Christ as Karl
Marx. The function of the Brechtian role is to alienate
viewers from conventional moral responses to the
dramatic events portrayed. The role becomes, then, a
variation of the mask of the god in whose presence
one must pause from one’s daily routines and con-
template essential things. In preparing a role for
Brecht’s epic theatre, actors distance themselves from
an emotional, psychological attachment to the char-
acter in order to present a message about the universal
moral condition of humankind.
The other side of 20th century presentational forms
is that exemplified by the Samuel Beckett role of the
existential clown. He is a minimal creature-alien-
ated, disembodied, amoral, clinging to the detritus of
a forlorn culture. His diminutive rituals are all that
seem to prop him up. Exemplified by the Laurel and
Hardy-like Gogo and Didi in Waiting for Godot, he is
lost in a stark landscape, waiting for something
meaningful to happen. Like Krapp, he replays bits
and pieces of his life for a clue to his existence. Yet,
he is not a tragic Lear, howling on the heath; the
Beckett protagonist suggests Charlie Chaplin and
Buster Keaton, the hero as pathetic clown.
The Beckett role of existential clown is abstract
and precise, almost obsessive-compulsive in its ges-
ture and diction. And yet, in its poetry it lives through
the small sensual moments of play and ritual. Al-
though it appears suicidal, it cannot help its propen-
sity for joking on the edge of the grave. The Beckett
actor, in his best presentational form, must combine
the physical skills of a clown, the linguistic skills of
a poet, and the world view of the absurdist.
The apotheosis of 20th century realism begins with
Brecht and Beckett and culminates in the post-modem
forms of theatre and performance art, where the role
functions as a sign or image. The formal properties of
the piece become more important than the content.
The role is abstract, deconstructed, turned inside out.
Within the shell that is the role, under the mask, is
nothing. There are no messages. Actors and their
actions become mechanical and determined. The
directors, such as Robert Wilson and Richard Fore-
man, pull the strings. In truncating the role, they have
either overturned an ancient tradition of playing the
role of god, or discovered a new variation on an old
theme: there are no individual roles, simply a chorus,
singing, dancing, chanting a hymn in praise of the
new gods of technology.
This very brief review focuses on specific theatri-
cal characters who exemplify certain universal role
types, some of which have been described above. In
beginning to develop a dramatic role theory useful to
the practice of drama therapy, I think it is important,
first, to isolate the roles as types-Cordelia as inno-
cent-then speak to the specific qualities of Cordelia
as one kind of innocent person. Next, we examine
Cordelia’s function as innocent in relationship to her
father in the play. And, finally, we look at the way
Cordelia plays out her role as innocent, whether
abstractly, leaning toward a cognitive form of presen-
tation, or realistically, leaning to a more emotional
form of representation. The role model, then, be-
comes one of identifying role type, role quality,
function, and style. An abbreviated list based on some
of the characters mentioned above appears on the
following pages. The list is intended to provide a
model of selected, repeated theatrical role types.
A more expansive list might also include the
following role types: servant and master, trickster,
bully and coward, demagogue, idealist and cynic,
victim, assassin and suicide, adulterer, opportunist,
courtesan and seducer, sorcerer, defender, bureau-
crat, intellectual and artist, go-between, messenger,
angry young person, among many others. The further
roles of dispatcher, helper, and donor are derived
from Vladimir Propp’s (1968) delineation of themes
and roles in fairy tales.
In stylized forms of drama, the role can remain
fairly one dimensional (e.g., the Capitano figure of
the commedia del’arte, the prototypical coward bully).
Yet, even in such basic styles of performance, there
can be complexity. The fool character, Arlecchino, is
not only silly and ignorant, but also witty and clever,
pointing the way to such complex characters as the
Fool in King Lear and modem popular figures like
Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp and Woody Allen’s
schlemiel. In the latter filmic examples, both actor/
characters run the gamut from simple, unidimensional
role enactment to complex multidimensional ones.
In many plays, both presentational and represen-
tational, roles are richly drawn, complex, and multi-
dimensional. The role of Hamlet, for example, incorpor-
ates many sub-roles: those of wit and intellectual,
34 ROBERT J. LANDY

TYPE QUALITY FUNCTION STYLIZATION

Nature (animals, simple, mimetic. to assert power over presentational,

sun,rain, etc.) nature. abstract,
mimetic.

Gods and spirits transcendence: presentational,

to assert power abstract,
over life and death. mimetic.

e.g., Dionysus ecstatic, irrational.

e.g., Apollo rational, dreamlike,
prophetic.

The Ironic One superiority, wit. to delight the verbal

withholding what intellect. dexterity
one knows.

The Boaster unsophisticated, satire, to poke fun. burlesque.

ignorant.

Everyman/ earthy, sometimes to assert the voice stylized,

Chorus lyrical. of the people. presentational.

The Christ suffering, loving transcendence: to stylized,

unconditionally, teach moral virtues. presentational.
moral.

Tragic Hero vulnerable, to take a presentational

searching. spiritual or in classical drama;
psychological representational
journey. in modem drama.

Villain deceptive, to struggle with from presentational

power hungry, the hero. to representational.
immoral or amoral.

Innocent pure, virginal. to assert melodramatic,

moral virtue romantic.

Demon/Monster grotesque. to frighten, to melodramatic,

beastlike. mirror negative romantic; tends
qualities of human to be
psyche. presentational.

Charlatan hypocrite to deceive from presentational to

representational.

Fool ignorance, on comic relief; usually

one hand; wit moral and psycho- presentational.
and charm on logical wisdom.
the other.

Cuckold naive, foolish comic relief; to from low comedy

allow comic (presentational) to more
catharsis. representational
forms.

Bourgeois petty, unaware. to poke fun from presentational to

at middle-class representational.
values.
 THE DRAMATIC BASIS OF ROLE THEORY 35

TYPE QUALITY FUNCTION STYLIZATION

Miser tight, unaware, to acquire and hoard tends to be presentational.

obsessive/compulsive. things.

Outcast/Pariah nonconformist. scapegoat; a foil from presentational to representational.

self-pitying, for the bourgeois;
angry. to challenge the
aggressive. established order.

Romantic Lover sentimental, to transport melodramatic,

idealistic. viewer to ideal, romantic.
romantic world.

Faust: the restless, to realize full generally presentational

searcher for inquisitive, creative potential; but may be realistic
ultimate know- assertive, often serves a moral in modem drama.
ledge and power creative. function.

Epic theatre split, critical, to distance audience distanced;

role (e.g., Shen moral. from conventional moral epic; presentational.
Te, the whore with response; to provoke
the heart of gold) critical reaction.

Modem realistic multi-dimensional; to present the representational and

protagonist humanly drawn. illusion of realistic.
(e.g., Nora Helmer) reality.

Existential poetic, nihilistic, to muse on the presentational;

Clown minimal, amoral. absurdities of life. tragic-comic.

Post-modem abstract, more formal and presentational.

Anti-hero image, sign than aesthetic.
person.

rogue and fool, peasant slave, actor and romantic
lover, victim and pariah, Apollonian dreamer and
tragic man of action. Although the actor playing
Hamlet might focus on one particular sub-role, build-
ing the character from that source, he must not lose
sight of the other parts in order to maintain the
complexity of the whole Hamlet. In building the
whole, each part needs to be consciously acknowl-
edged, given form, rehearsed, then performed in
relation to the other characters in the play.
In the theatre, actors take on their roles to project
and communicate certain discrete qualities of a human
being. The role is an anchor, firmly lodged in a part
of the human psyche, limited by its function and
style. It, too, is limiting in the quality and quantity of
information it will impart to an audience. But the role
is also a line, thrown out into the waters of the social
world where each social interaction presents poten-
tially new ways of conceiving one’s role (see Cooley,
1922), and a rocket, propelled into the heavens where
the gods reside. As a line and a rocket, the role is
unlimited, unbound.
As we shall see below, the role model is useful for
drama therapists in helping clients identify certain
discrete qualities of their everyday roles that function
like their theatrical prototypes. Yet, in moving from
the image of role as anchor to that of line and rocket,
the drama therapist also must consider the complexity
of roles that not only speak to behavior, but also to
socialization, thought, feeling, and spirituality.
The next section involves the application of the
theatrical role model to the process of discovering role
structures through drama therapy. The model of role
type, quality, function, and style is intended as a
system that might well aid the drama therapy re-
searcher and practitioner in formulating assessment,
treatment, and valuative instruments.
The Use of Role in Drama Therapy
The image of the theatre remains strong in depth-
36 ROBERT J. LANDY
oriented psychotherapy that attempts to journey in and
out of the unconscious mind. An introjected dramatis
personae, the unconscious is a home for personal,
social, and archetypal roles. The process of depth
psychotherapy is both tragic and comic as one takes a
journey within, searching for a way to look at the
forbidden, irreconcilable paradoxes of one’s life and,
at the same time, desiring closure, resolution, a happy
ending.
Drama therapists in their roles of dispatcher, helper,
donor, and trickster, seem well suited to point the way
for clients. As donors drama therapists offer one most
significant magical agent-the role. This offering, as
unique as Freud’s free association, Jung’s archetype,
Skinner’s reinforcement, and Winnicott’s transitional
object, will provide the method clients will use in
their quest for transcendence as power and self-
knowledge.
Before drama therapists use the role method of
treatment, they must be well grounded themselves in
such methodology. I have been arguing for several
years (Landy, 1982, 1986) about the importance of
theatrical training for drama therapists. Drama thera-
pists must not only be aware of their own introjected
cast of characters, a knowledge gained through per-
sonal psychotherapy, but also of the process of
creating theatrical roles based in the dramatic litera-
ture. The latter is important because it serves as the
modus operandi of drama therapy. I am a drama
therapist because I work not only through role, but
also in role.
The function of the dispatcher role is to send the
hero (or heroine) on his (or her) way. Drama thera-
pists might well conceive of their role as such,
cognizant that their clients are about to go on an
important journey. Drama therapists provide a point
of embarkation and, with their nudging and encour-
agement, the journey will proceed.
In the helper role, drama therapists, like their
dramatic prototype, will move their clients onward,
guiding, nurturing, playing Virgil to the client’s
Dante.
In the donor role, drama therapists provide their
clients not only the magical agent of role, but also the
permission to play imaginatively.
Therapists might also take on the role of trickster,
a complex role that is rooted in the mythology of
several cultures, most notably the Indians of North
America. In drama, the trickster takes the form of the
more complex fool characters, such as Puck, who
commit themselves to trickery and mockery, yet also
profess a certain poetic wisdom. The trickster char-
acter often functions as a catalyst, stirring up or
igniting a spark within the mind of the protagonist. As
tricksters, therapists become more active and playful,
provokers and prodders, who slip in and out of
clients’ psyches, doubling their inner fears and wishes,
giving voice to their silences and lapses. As tricksters,
drama therapists may even take on the Mephistophe-
les role, leading their clients, Faust-like, to the
sources of their psyches.
The more traditional role of psychotherapist as
distanced observer is also taken on by drama thera-
pists when their clients have the need for an audience
or viewer who may function as the critical parent or
the impartial judge.
Drama therapists generally strive to find a balance
between the part of themselves that is actor-like,
capable of conjuring up an excellent performance,
and the part of themselves that is therapist-like,
audience-like, observing the effects of the action and
judging when and how to move it to another level of
role-enactment and distance. In many ways, the aim
is to become the consummate repertory player, a
juggler of roles, a one-person masquerade.
The client enters drama therapy as a novice actor,
a burned-out performer, hopelessly type-cast, or a bit
player in search, finally, of a leading role. The
severely emotionally disturbed client, one locked into
a single role of dependent child, fool, demon or
outcast, may initially present no role at all, simply an
empty shell. In such a case, the drama therapist’s job
is to teach the basic skills of impersonation and play.
For most neurotic clients, the act of transcendence
through role is a liberating one. But they know how to
play, at least theoretically. For many crack addicts,
alcoholics, and those with severe eating disorders,
play is not even in the realm of possibility. Their
addiction is to extinction and denial; they become
Beckett characters without the poetry and comedy.
The possibilities of being more than one thing, of
creating a diversity of roles and an imaginative life
need to be extinguished.
During the initial session of many drama therapy
groups, I ask the members to move about the room
freely, relaxing their bodies and letting go of thoughts.
Then I ask them to focus in on one body part and
extend it through a movement. While encouraging the
members to further extend the movement, I ask them
to allow a role to emerge. The roles invoked provide
an initial glimpse into the internal state of the clients.
A drama therapy group of six adult mental health
 THE DRAMATIC
professionals began with three prominent pariah type
roles: Quasimodo, the monster, outcast; Lulu, a
prostitute, also an outcast; and Joey, an old, beaten
down, out of work, alcoholic laborer, another fringe
person. As we enacted the role of the outcast, we
focused on a concern held by all. On a personal level,
all had an identification with Joey, a part of them-
selves that felt defeated, burned-out, homeless, and
lost in the universe.
On a macro level, each felt committed to under-
stand the conditions that lead to alcoholism, bum-out,
and homelessness, characteristics of many of their
clients. The function the role of outcast served for the
group was to uncover their ambivalence toward the
established order, to test whether the group was a safe
“home,” to pinpoint their fears of becoming outcasts
themselves, and to begin to understand the dimen-
sions of their social and political consciousness. In
working through the role, contrasting old Joey with a
younger, more hopeful version, the group was able to
acknowledge its “Joey” quality and proceed with its
issues of connectedness.
A second group of five adult women, involved in
the drama therapy process to explore significant life
issues, began as one client, Lois, invoked the role of
a simple worker, a truckdriver, who unwittingly
crashed into Lois’ car on a bridge. Although she
managed to eventually heal her physical pain, Lois’
psychological scars remained unhealed. In playing
out an encounter between Lois and the truckdriver,
the group presented the role of a simple man, an
Everyman, who becomes a victim of circumstance
even as he thrusts Lois into the same role by acciden-
tally hitting her car. Through the drama, Lois makes
a strong identification with the truckdriver. They both
become simple people aware of their new roles as
victims, carrying around a heavy burden of guilt,
shame, and anger. Lois is able to transcend her simple
role through a cathartic moment realistically enacted,
letting her anger pour out toward the truckdriver part
of herself that is too careless, too complacent, too
average, too potentially destructive. In addressing one
role while in the guise of another, Lois moved toward
a more balanced state.
In a later session, Janet brought in a problem she
was having with her boss, an overweight and insen-
sitive braggart. The boss, Mr. Fleishman, seemed to
embody qualities of the boaster, the bourgeois, and
the villain. I set up a Fleishman convention, asking all
members of the group to create the character simul-
taneously, taking Janet’s lead as to the movement and
BASIS OF ROLE THEORY
emotional tone of the role. I encouraged exaggerated
portrayals, a kind of stylized clown show. The group
appeared to be having fun in their caricatures.
Then Janet confronted Fleishman, accusing him of
humiliating her, verbally abusing her in front of
colleagues, and stripping her of her worth as a
professional therapist. Fleishman loomed large. Two
group members played the rofe simultaneously. He
became a demon fool, monstrous in his abuse, igno-
rant of his ignorance. Janet held her own. She
reversed roles with Fleishman, adding more of a
realistic touch, toning down the bombast, revealing
more the bourgeois and less the monster. Finally,
Janet became aware of her ongoing problems with
supervisors, bosses, and others she identified as
masks of her mother. She acknowledged the function
of the Fleishman role as that of grabbing power and
denying her importance as a grown-up woman. And
she saw that she often covertly colluded with her
persecutors, giving them the power to control her
well-being.
At the end of the session, Janet was able to look at
the Fleishman role more objectively, regarding it as
an introject, a part of herself that stands in her way of
fully reaching her potential in her professional and
personal roles.
In the above examples, the role model served to
concretize and simplify an antagonist role, that of the
aggressive male, a kind of villain or demon who
causes physical and emotional harm to the protago-
nist. Looking deeper into the quality and function of
the role, the protagonists uncovered a deeper psycho-
logical truth: a problematic external role type often
masks an inner part of oneself that may cause consid-
erable dis-ease. That inner role can well be released
through acting with style, distancing the client from
her everyday defenses. When re-cognized and worked
through, the demonic, villainous power of the exter-
nal role type can be diminished.
A different example concerns short-term drama
therapy (five one-hour sessions) with a troubled
family who were unlikely candidates for treatment.
The cast of characters was a mother, 45 years old, a
secretary, and three sons, all in their early to mid-
twenties. They came from a highly traditional work-
ing-class, inner city neighborhood. The maternal
~andmother lived with them. The father had died
recently and since that time the youngest son, Ral-
phie, who was unemployed, had been acting out
aggressively, verbally abusing his mother and getting
into fights with his brothers. The oldest brother,
38 ROBERT J. LANDY
Vincent, moved out of the family house just before
his father died, but he still called his mother on the
phone at least twice a day. He attempted to start his
own catering business with a loan from his mother,
but failed, losing all the money. He subsequently
worked for a larger organization and was unhappy
with his status and salary. The middle brother,
Steven, was about to graduate college, get married,
and move out on his own. His demeanor and speech
suggested a superior, Apollonian, upper middle-class,
intellectual, and skeptical role, bearing none of
the earthiness and colloquialisms of his mother and
brothers.
I saw my task initially as trying to uncover the role
structure in the family. What was the function of the
irrational, almost Dionysian outbursts of Ralphie?
Was he truly the one most in need of help? After all,
he was the scapegoat, the identified patient, the one
who provided the pretext for the family to seek
therapy.
How did Steven’s superior role impact on the
family? And who was Vincent? Was he helper to his
mother? Was he playing out an ironic role, as I
suspected, withholding some knowledge that he could
not share in order to maintain the integrity of the
family? And what about the mother? Was she a victim
and innocent, a Catholic Mother Courage, trying to
steer her family through the wars of an encroaching
outside world? The family lived in a site of racially
motivated violence, symbolic in late 1989 of a war
between closed, traditional values and open liberal
ones.
It was difficult for the family to work in role. Their
resistance to move beyond the literal was very strong.
But they did agree to enact one another. In the role of
mother, Ralphie first offered an exaggerated version
of the nag and the shrew, but then proceeded to dig
deeper into his mother’s psyche, finding the fear part,
the controlling part, the inability to let go and allow
the family to move into the world outside the ghetto.
As mother, he came down strongly on Ralphie,
hounding him, on the one hand, to get out, find a job,
earn money, and take on responsibility, but on the
other hand making it clear that she did not really want
him to leave.
In working through the mother role, Ralphie began
to realize that there was a war raging within himself.
The battle between staying with tradition and taking a
risk on the outside was ingrained in the consciousness
of his entire community. The voice of the family had
a vise-grip on him so great that when he was able to
get a job, he worked obsessively, until he burned
himself out and got fired by provoking a fight with his
boss. Then he returned to the family, only to have his
mother, the primary boss, again instill the mixed
messages of get out and stay.
Ralphie, the identified patient, began to see the
contradictory roles. He asked to work privately with
me for several sessions. He was able to play out the
two voices of tradition and progression and the two
roles of the trapped, dependent, angry young man and
the hopeful, more rational Apollonian type capable of
looking forward to a positive and independent future.
Ralphie acknowledged that the voices of the family
were his voices. Further, he was the only one in the
family willing to address his feelings toward the
offstage character, his father. He expressed his fear of
slipping into his father’s role, an unhappy tradition-
alist who needed to keep the family from moving into
the 20th century. Yet, in his pull to be like his father
and others in his community, he stayed home, pro-
tected his mother, dreamed of making tons of money
and saving the family.
The many roles of Ralphie began to pour out: he
was ironic and boastful, foolish and innocent, a savior
and a monster, sometimes victim, sometimes demon.
He was a pariah and a helper, a fierce protector of
women, a son without a positive role model, unso-
phisticated yet not fully giving in to the ignorance and
closed-mindedness of many in his neighborhood.
As Ralphie played, the others retreated. The grand-
mother never came. Steven found excuses to stop
coming after one session. At the end of the hour,
playing the skeptic and cynic, he accused me of
taping the session. I assured him that the object he
was referring to was an answering machine.
Vincent, casting me in the role of priest during a
private moment before the others arrived, confessed
that he was gay. His mother did not know, although
his brothers did. He had been living with his male
lover for several years, but his gay role was to remain
in the closet, hidden from the family. I had asked
them all to draw a picture of the family structure,
including all those who were close. Vincent included
Bill, his lover, but spoke of him as roommate,
refusing to go any further.
The mother was very active during the first three
sessions. She saw the family as a vise, locking each
one to each other. She agreed that it was important for
the health of the family that the vise begin to release
its stranglehold. She played the role of Ralphie with
abandon, yelling and flailing. She conceived of her
 THE DRAMATIC BASIS OF ROLE THEORY
role as the traditional mother-providing, nurturing,
loving. Yet, she occasionally had a glimpse of the
journeyer role, one available to start a new life
beyond the confines of her neighborhood, beyond the
boys who so desperately needed to be taken care of.
The mother’s final act, before terminating, was to
draw two pictures-one of the family as she presently
saw it, the other of the family as she would like it to
be. At first she was hesitant to share the drawings, but
when she did, they were exactly the same; her role
appeared in both as that of the sun, the center of a
universe comprised of her boys and her mother. Her
husband, dead and buried, had been omitted. The
remainder of the family had to be preserved intact,
unch~ging, fixed in its positions around her. Like the
early theatrical function of nature roles, the ultimate
function of mother as sun was to assert her power over
nature, delaying the natural order of growth and
change among her sons.
In abruptly terminating therapy, the family made
the hard move toward transcendence, an assertion of
power beyond certain proscribed limits, that much
harder. For transcendence can only occur when an
individual or group is willing not only to play out and
look at their existing roles, but also to move toward an
expanded sense of the role possibilities.
One year after termination, Ralphie has made the
most signific~t change. He still lives with his mother,
but he has proudly taken on a new occupational role,
earning a steady income for the first time in his life.
His Dionysian outbursts have been tempered by his
Apollonian search for those adult roles that had
heretofore escaped him.
In this example, the role model helped the therapist
conceptualize the family structure as well as individ-
uals’ functions within the family. Further, as the
therapist asked the clients to think of their own
behavior in terms of role, he encouraged them to find
a similar meaning in the roles and their functions. The
mother and two sons, Vincent and Steven, were
unable to move beyond the externals of their family,
occupation, and sexual roles. Ralphie took one step
further and was able to see first how he had intemal-
ized the family dynamics, and then what he needed to
do in order to move beyond the fixed role of agitator
and angry young man.
The final role of the client in drama therapy is, I
think, a murderous one. Using the Hamlet image, one
is finally liberated to act, to symbolically kill the
king/father. As “readiness is all,” the symbolic
murder can only occur when a good portion of one’s
39
role repertory has been satisfactorily played out, and
the roles of thinker, schemer, and procrastinator have
been exhausted.
In order to internalize the rites and powers of their
therapists, clients symbolically kill their therapists,
becoming their own director. Clients who, through
the therapeutic process, have discovered a way to
become familiar with their own internal cast of
characters and to hold them in balance with one
another, are now the consummate actors. A complete,
available repertory is the goal. A working through of
as many significant roles as possible, in relationship
to each other, is the method by which one achieves
the goal and through which one continues to expand
one’s skills as a future performer in everyday life.
Role Type, Quality, Function, and Style:
A Dramatic Model of Role
The uniqueness of drama therapy is that it proceeds
through role. In working through role, the drama
therapist can well make use of the precedent set in
theatre. For theatre not only implies a method of
treatment, through role-playing, storytelling, mask,
puppetry, and many other projective techniques, but
also a model of healing through role. The components
of that model include role type, quality, function, and
style.
In noting the type of role that a client invokes in
drama therapy, the therapist is given a glimpse of a
part of the person that needs to be seen, heard, and
acknowledged. The therapist’s role is initially to
facilitate that invocation and to help the client exter-
nalize and separate one role from the many intemal-
ized roles that are available. As a role begins to
appear, the therapist asks the client to name the role
and begin to give it substance through movement,
sound, and language.
The naming corresponds generally to the theatrical
role model. For example, Fleishman, literally the man
of meat, becomes more than an individual person.
Through drama, the individual case is transformed
into the universal condition. Fleishman, as singular
role, takes on meaning larger than one. For Janet, he
is all bosses and authority figures, mother, and,
finally, a split off part of herself. Role as type works
through the personal and particular as a way of
accessing the universal and global. In some cases the
procedure is reversed as one moves from the universal
to the personal. In either case the goal is to find one
form in the other.
 ROBERT J. LANDY
In working with the client in role, the drama
therapist moves toward a clarification of the quality of
the role. This part of the process involves an exten-
sion and, at times, caricature of the role, allowing the
client to play with or make fun of that thing of great
power that cannot so easily be approached directly.
The qualities of specific role types remain remark-
ably similar throughout the history of theatre. It is
conceivable that with more research into role theory
in drama therapy, a similar situation will be discov-
ered. If it is true that each type suggests a particular
set of qualities, then the drama therapist would have
a way to address the variations and discrepancies
often exhibited between role and quality. When one
needs, for example, to play out the large, powerful
Fleishman part of oneself, but is only, in fact, able to
emit a small, timid sound and closed, weak move-
ment, then the therapist needs to point out the
discrepancy and help the client find the appropriate
qualities that will carry the role.
Actors of quality know that in playing the role of a
powerful monster, one does not necessarily go for the
obvious large gesture and sound. In therapy, how-
ever, the client sometimes needs to experience mo-
ments of obvious exaggeration that, psychodynamically
speaking, may be much more difficult than the case of
the actor discovering the appropriate aesthetic mo-
ment. Before subtlety can be discovered within a role,
the client, like the actor, needs a safe period of play
to caricature and exaggerate in order to find the role
type that conceals the individual and subtle character,
that conceals the universal form, again. Implied here
is the aesthetic notion of the universal embedded in
the personal and the personal embedded in the uni-
versal.
A knowledge of the function of the role serves as
a substitute for analysis of the client’s life dilemma. I
have argued elsewhere (Landy , 1986) that drama
therapy can be regarded as a viable option to more
conventional psychoanalytically-oriented psychother-
apies. As such, it liberates itself from the analytical/
interpretive mode, offering instead an aesthetic model
wherein the meaning of one’s creation resides in the
object created and within the mind and heart of the
creator.
One role of the therapist that could well be
disavowed in drama therapy is that of the analyst.
Yet, like the theatrical director, drama therapists need
to help clients make sense of their creation. In looking
at the function of a particular role, the need for
making meaning of the enactment in role can be
addressed. For example, when Janet finally realized
that the Fleishman part of herself functioned to
impede her professional and personal development,
she was ready to take the next step, acknowledging
her own hunger for power .and control and taking the
long journey toward working with that cognition.
Actors in the theatre frequently speak of the
motivations of their characters. In the charlatan role,
one’s motivation might be to deceive. In the helper
role, one’s motivation might well be to support and
nurture. In drama therapy, motivation becomes func-
tion, which might be positive or negative for the
client. Thus, for example, the negative function of
Fleishman might be to underline the crass, power
hungry parts of Janet. On the other hand, the Fleish-
man role might serve a positive function, not only
leading Janet to become aware of the ways she blocks
herself, but also leading her to more assertive, pow-
erful enactments in her professional and personal
interactions.
In examining function of a role, the drama thera-
pist and client do work that is similar to analysis in
that they attempt to make sense of the role. Yet,
functioning more as artists and less as scientists, they
model themselves after the director and actor who
attempt to understand a character, in part, through its
function within a scene, a play, and a holistic aes-
thetic concept.
The final part of the dramatic role model involves
style, the degree of representational reality and pre-
sentational abstraction inherent in a given role. The
degree of aesthetic stylization embodied in a role
implies an equivalent degree of emotional involve-
ment. Generally speaking, the more stylized and
presentational a role, the less emotional involvement
is required by the actor. The more a role approaches
abstraction, the more it calls out a cognitive response
from the actor and viewer. The more a role ap-
proaches realism, the greater it evokes an emotional
response. Many forms of comedy and satire, includ-
ing that of Aristophanes, Moliere, Charlie Chaplin,
Joe Orton, and Tom Stoppard, appeal more to the
intellect than to the emotions. Conversely, tragedy
evokes emotion more explicitly than it does cogni-
tion.
I have argued elsewhere that one rich way of
conceptualizing the ends and means of drama therapy
is through the concept of aesthetic distancing (Landy,
1983, 1986). Through this conceptual lens, the aim of
drama therapy work is to help clients attain a balance
between the emotional and intellectual parts of them-
 THE DRAMATIC BASIS OF ROLE THEORY
selves, so that feeling is accessible without being
overwhelming, and reflection is also possible without
overly-intellectualizing. Aesthetic distance is a bal-
anced point between one role and another, between
the me in role and the not-me out of role. Presenta-
tional forms, such as the expressionism of Brecht and
Beckett, tend to lean toward the intellectual, overdis-
tanced pole. Representational forms, such as the
poetic realism of Chekhov, Ibsen, and Miller, tend to
lean toward the emotional underdistanced pole.
In working through drama therapy, the client is led
toward a balanced moment of aesthetic distance, a
point where catharsis, a kind of felt intelligence, can
occur. In terms of using stylization in their work,
drama therapists draw on the kinds of role abstrac-
tions that will help the underdistanced client reach a
balanced point, and the kinds of reality-based roles
that will help the overdistanced client move toward
catharsis and balance. Psychodramatic roles, based in
the reality of a protagonist, are indicated for those
who are too removed and remote in their role-playing.
Projective roles, those embodied in fictional charac-
ters, puppets, and masks, are more generally indi-
cated for those who tend to merge too much with their
characters.
Generally speaking, drama therapists use varying
levels of stylization to help their clients achieve a
balance of distance, an ability to act, without the fear
of being swallowed up in the sea of their actions, and
to simultaneously reflect, without the need to avoid
the water at all costs.
Conclusion
This paper presents the beginnings of a role theory
derived from theatre and based in theatrical role type,
quality, function, and style. Further investigation
might well reveal a full-blown typology of roles, a
kind of theatrical archetype system. This system
could be expanded to include social and psychological
sources.
If such a system is valid, it may further guide the
41
drama therapist in practical matters of assessment,
treatment, and evaluation, as well as matters of
research. The one assessment instrument available,
the Diagnostic Role-playing Test (Johnson, 1988),
may, for example, be expanded to incorporate find-
ings from dramatic role theory. Drama therapy, a
field very much in need of a theory of its own, might
well move forward within the bounds of such a clearly
dramatic model.
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