Theatre for Health - Applied Theatre Center

ATC strongly believes in the power of the arts to enhance the well-being of those who participate. Art making and performance have been used since the beginning of the time for healing and community building. Over the last 20 years, researchers have investigated how engagement in the arts benefits people on both an individual and community level. This research has demonstrated how effective the arts can be in improving the health and well being in those who participate. It has also been discovered that the arts can be utilized to address the social determinants of health, which are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that drive social and economic inequities.

Theatre for senior adults
Senior adults are a rich resource for any community. Applied theatre programs are designed to enrich their lives in community, with each other and with the community at large. Theatre is a proven method for stimulating brain health among seniors. These programs encourage creative expression, spontaneity, collaboration and a healthy dose of fun!
- Living Memories! is a 10 week program that uses theatre activities to stir up memories and provide new experiences, which are then shared with the group.
- Playback Café is an interactive story – telling and story – sharing theatre experience appropriate for dinner entertainment or other gatherings. Playback Cafe can be a performance or a workshop. (Visit our Playback Café page for more information)
- Improv Alive! uses improvisational acting classes to encourage spontaneity, positive emotions and lots of laughter.
- Ready or Not, Stories about aging – performed by 5 “seasoned” citizens – Ready or Not is a 60 minute live theatre program that uses comedy, music and drama to take a sensitive and humorous look at the joys,fears and challenges of growing older in our society. It is designed for people of all ages, but its aim is to: reduce fear and prejudice about aging by breaking down stereotypes and providing examples of healthy aging.
Theatre for health promotion
- Unfinished Business (A dramatic message about organ donation) – In the fall of 2016 there are more than 121,000 persons in the United States waiting for a life-saving transplant. The number continues to grow. In South Carolina alone more than 900 persons are on the waiting list. It is estimated that over 50 percent of persons who die and would qualify to be a donor never have their organs offered for possible donation.
  Unfinished Business is a play that realistically explores issues involved in considering donation including reasons some persons object to it, the motives for becoming a donor, misunderstanding about brain death, withdrawal from life support and family decision-making in the face of emotional trauma due to sudden death.
- Sticks and Bones, Alternatives to violence for young people – Children and adults who have not learned the social skills required to deal with conflict end up responding two ways: fight or flight. Neither of these responses solves the conflict in a way that is satisfactory to those involved.
  This multifaceted program uses theater arts to teach a set of skills that are common to most conflict resolution programs. Role play scenarios then offer students the opportunity to practice identifying and resolving conflicts in a constructive manner. Some of the the skills modeled and practiced are: showing respect for self and others, active listening, keeping calm, expressing feelings, identifying problems, setting goals, generating options, looking for consequences, asking for agreement and following through on plans toward solutions.
  Sticks and Bones also includes two longer, interactive sociodrama projects: the BLAGG project and the PUMP project. In the BLAGG project the group creates a play from their collective life stories and through interacting with the characters they develop empathy and perspective. In the PUMP project participants learn to deescalate frustration and anger before they result in aggression.
- What’s On Your Plate?, Theatre workshops for diabetes education – South Carolina ranks 10th in the nation for people who have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes – and the numbers continue to grow. 1 in 8 African Americans in SC have a diagnosis. The number of people under 35 diagnosed is also growing. Diabetes is blind to race, gender, and age. Changing eating habits requires motivation and persistence. “What’s that on your plate?” is a series of short and humorous theatrical vignettes that along with proper diabetes education can help to motivate and educate those persons who are struggling to understand and accept this diagnosis.
- Looking In / Facing Out, A series of interactive forum plays on hot topics in our community – A dynamic, engaging and theatrical way to get your group thinking, talking and acting out solutions to their very real and pressing challenges. During each Forum presentation, the Playback actors perform 3 to 5 short scenes about characters struggling with issues in their lives or in their communities. Then the audience is invited to participate by offering opinions, perspectives and solutions! Plays and topics include:
  A Will to Survive: Will, a homeless man struggling to get his life together and reunite with his family, fights one challenge after another in his quest to survive on the mean streets of Greenville.
  A Will to Thrive: Another play about Will. He’s turned some corners but is still struggling to overcome the mistakes of his past.
  Oh Snap! Perceptions of Poverty: Jennifer, a single mom on food stamps (SNAP) meets Ty, a successful businessman, in a grocery store line. Opinions are heated until we step back in time to learn more about these two people.
  Nora’s House: Nora, a wife and mother, struggles to find her identity while married to an emotionally abusive husband.
  Choose peace – not conflict: A series of three scenes which present conflict around gender, religious, age and racial discrimination. The characters meet in a university classroom, a real estate office, and outside a McDonalds where a young black man is confronted by a police officer.
  Custom forum plays: We will create an interactive forum play on a topic relevant to the people in your organization or community!