How To Work With Emotions From The Theater
Theater is an activity that has many therapeutic benefits. In fact, it is a discipline that allows you to work, release and express feelings. Therefore, in this article we are going to review how to work with emotions from the theater.
Expressing the darkest aspects of the human experience can be extremely comforting for people. Acting provides many opportunities to explore the shadows and aspects that remain within. The act of playing characters gives the opportunity to transform on a personal level.
Also, the most important aspect of expressing yourself through a creative way is that it provides opportunities to bring out the darkest aspects that inhabit yourself.
By playing characters who are tyrannical, selfish, and destructive, repressed negative energy that has become trapped within the person is released. This, if not externalized, could generate major problems that affect psychological and mental health.
The theater contributes to the development of the youngest
The theater is an element that contributes to the development and well-being of people. It is an opportunity for young people to learn to work on emotions by experimenting and wondering about the relationship with the body, with the other, with beauty, with ideology and with values, topics that are very important at this time.
Adolescents find in theater a combination of situations and emotions that they experience every day, but that go a bit beyond the artistic dimension. This means that they have a rewarding experience as they build their relationship with the world.
Among other things, the theater offers young people knowledge of their own body, their own emotions and reactions. In addition, it also provides listening skills, teamwork, empathy, improved relationships, and increased self-esteem.
In itself, the theater creates a space to pose different situations, recreating and interpreting roles to be able to use them for a purpose.
In fact, more and more schools are incorporating theater into the educational plan, since emotional education plays a very important role in the integral development of people. The idea of having theater classes allows students to work on this aspect, which represents an excellent way to connect them with the world of emotions.
Exercises to work on emotions through theater
If you want to work on emotions through theater, you should know that there are some simple exercises. Take note, as we explain some that are very simple below:
1. Given to express emotions
To carry out the first exercise, you need a large die that contains 6 faces represented with each emotion that you want to work on. For example, sadness, admiration, fear, etc. can be included.
Students must sit in a circle and each participant must wait their turn. Once you roll the dice, you will need to express the emotion that you were touched and explain what you have experienced in relation to that state on past occasions.
2. Role play
This second exercise is, without a doubt, the most fun of the three. Several participants are needed, who will be in charge of maintaining a conversation between them representing different roles and emotions.
Before we start, we will distribute some blank papers with different emotions to each one. Then, at the end of the exercise, discover what kind of emotion each participant represented.
3. Guess the emotions
Finally, we present you a very simple exercise to work on emotions. As in the first activity, the children should sit in a circle next to each other. Each participant must act out an emotion and the companions must guess it; when they succeed, it is passed on to the next young man.
Before concluding, it should be noted that theater is a fantastic tool for working on the emotional education of young people, but also of the elderly. In fact, everyone can make use of the skills that are practiced in it.
This activity allows people to control emotions in a positive way and train essential skills for personal and social development. Performing theater improves self-esteem, empathy, responsibility, teamwork and trust, both in others and in oneself.
