I Screwed Up

A few weeks ago I directed a psychodrama workshop for an alcohol and drug conference. The first woman, Flora, who presented herself as a protagonist said, "I'll do it if no one else wants to. But if someone else wants to do it, they can." Another woman Salli said that she would like to work. Flora said, "Well she can do it then." I encouraged her not to defer to another if she wanted to work. She said she was willing to defer to Salli.

Salli wanted to work on a friend who suffered extreme emotional problems and chose Flora to play that role. I carefully explained how role reversals were done. Flora could not understand what was required of her after several role reversals and additional explanations. The audience was making sounds of disbelief.

I screwed up. Flora should have replaced, but my concerns were that it would hurt her self esteem and that it would take too much time to bring in a new person. Bad decisions.

I screwed up. My first concern should have been for the protagonist and audience. I could have told Flora that I wanted to try someone else in the role. Formulating the words in the moment would not have been easy for me. I have now found words to use in the future.

The psychodrama worked out well; the protagonist had good resolution and was happy as was the audience. But I had to feed Flora words to use and found other ways of circumventing her lack of understanding. It could have been much smoother and better with a different auxiliary.


A newspaper interview of Jonathan Moreno and his book about his father, J.L. Moreno, titled, Rediscovering the Impromptu Man, can be found at:

http://thepenngazette.com/rediscovering-the-impromptu-man/