Dramatherapy and the feminist tradition

The way in which a field or school of thought comes into being has a definite impact upon its nature, both by influencing the process of its forging an identity and as a representation of the political and ideological context from which it springs. Ideas do not arise in a vacuum: they originate in a specific context, from a particular ideology. For example, Richard Schechner (1977/2005) challenged the Western notion that claimed that ancient Greek theatre derives from ritual on the grounds that it was a hypothesis (not a proven fact), inspired by the theories of evolution that were popular in the positivistic paradigm of the nineteenth century. Instead, he proposed a horizontal explanation (supported by the egalitarian spirit of the second half of the twentieth century), by which the development of theatre is an occurrence that happens naturally in all cultures, along with six other activities (play, games, sport, ritual, music and dance), which together ‘comprise the public performance activities of humans’ (1977/2005, p. 7).