Ritual Poetic Drama
The journey’s purpose is to engage the inner creative content of the participant in order that unconscious blocks and barriers that serve to inhibit and prohibit the artists’ ability to be vulnerable, can be broken down . Through these facilitated and guided journeys the artist/participant LIVES in moments and re-visits events that we call Rite of Passage Moments. After each journey there is an immediate series of writing and sharing that are created, then are publicly presented for the community at large. Each session begins with an Opening and ends with a Closing. The ultimate outcome of the journey is TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE. We maintain that only when we change ourselves can we then inspire, promote and foster change in others and in the communities in which we live, work and exist.
Ritual
A series of activities designed to foster an atmosphere of trust allowing for the willing participation of each individual in facilitated and guided journeys where the participants enter into an “altered” state of consciousness.
Poetic
The imagery and the music of the story. The poetic uses the infinite power of WORD imagery through the rhythm, rhyme and the poetry of language with its multiple meanings and messages. It must be spoken with passion and power.
Drama
The essence of the story and it is the story itself. What we are looking for is revelation.“The story is impelled by the necessity to reveal itself; a story has nothing to hide (at least not intentionally.) There is no resolution to a story. The aim of the story is revelation and, that occurs in each of us in what we make of the questions with which the story leaves us.” -James Baldwin
*Since 2006 the MFA Pedagogy Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Theatre Department has been a laboratory for the training of artists/educators in the Use of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum. There have been many trained and several have been certified as trainers.