Between Me and the Giant: Imagination Workshop

Art has its own special place in therapeutic settings, far different from that of therapy itself. Here William Cleveland reveals the courageous and relentless energy of Imagination Workshop, a group of actors at work in a neuropsychiatric institute. William Cleveland is a pioneer in his own right of numerous community and institutional art programs, including Artsreach Community Artists, California-Arts-In-Corrections and California State Summer School for the Arts. A longer version of this article first appeared in Cleveland's book Art in Other Places: Artists at Work in America's Community and Social Institutions. The book, published by Praeger (1992), features case studies of a variety of successful arts programs and projects that have integrated the arts into community and institutional settings. —Eds.

I came to the ward as a beast; I came to the play as a real beast. When the play first started, I didn't want to do it. I just wrote down some beastly lines. You said, "Think of a character." I thought of a beast. You said, "Think of two characters." I had two beasts. And I enjoyed the transition. The beast moves to a person of feeling. Sort of what I would like to do here on the ward.

—A young patient, Richard, commenting on the character
he created in an Imagination Workshop play[1]

In May of 1984, the Joint Legislative Committee for the Arts of the California State Legislature convened a hearing to gather testimony on the work of artists who had developed programs with support from the California Arts Council's Artists in Social Institutions Program. Margaret Ladd, the founder of Imagination Workshop, began her testimony before the Committee by relaying a message that had been given to her by a young man who was a participant in her drama program at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA.

Prior to coming to Sacramento to testify, Ladd had asked her class what they wanted her to say to the members of the committee about the work they had been doing. This young man, a catatonic who had never before spoken in class, responded to her question by picking up a hat and saying, "I'll play Jack." Ladd asked him if he had anything he wanted related to the committee. He said, "No," but a short time later while he was doing an improvisation as "Jack," also for the first time, he indicated he did have something he wanted to say. He said, "Please tell them that here we're able to dream." The girl he had been working with then asked, "What are you dreaming of?" And he said, "I dream of a place and a time where love and friendship come between me and the giant."

This young man is one of more than 40,000 seriously mentally disabled patients who have participated in Imagination Workshop classes during the past 25 years. His response to Ladd's question is a small example of what she and the other professional actors who conduct the program's workshops feel is the powerful impact the theater arts can have on the lives of the people they work with. Ladd describes the result as the development of "character muscles."

By playing characters removed from themselves and creating a repertoire of behaviors, they start to find all kinds of ways to behave. I think it gives people who are too inhibited and fragile to relate to others a second chance. Through their imagination, they feel safer and can give it another try. They develop courage and can then make an effort to relate to therapy. We're a stepping stone.[2]

The placing of these stepping stones has been no easy matter. The presence of Imagination Workshop at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, Edgemont Hospital, Gramercy Place Homeless Shelter, John Adams Junior High School and other Los Angeles healthcare, mental- health and educational facilities is the result of many years of hard work and sacrifice. As is the case with many community-based arts programs, the impetus for this remarkable program was provided by one person, an artist, who saw a need and responded artistically.

In 1969, Ladd was appearing in an Ionesco play on Broadway. She and other members of the cast were invited to visit a Massachusetts mental hospital to see a Gertrude Stein play that was being performed by the patients there. As she watched, she began to consider how she would approach the challenge of working, as an actor, with patients at the hospital. The idea intrigued her. She was particularly struck by what she perceived as a common ground shared by the actors and the patients. She saw that both were dealing quite intensely with the impact and power of their imaginations. Ladd surmised that while actors use their imaginations in constrictive ways, the patient is doing quite the opposite. Concluding that the imaginative discipline inherent in theater work might be of some benefit to the hospital's patients, she approached officials at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York with the idea of conducting some drama workshops there.

Over the next two years, the processes and skills that would become the bread and butter of Imagination Workshop were hammered out by Ladd and her husband-to-be, writer/director Lyle Kessler. The more they worked, the greater became their commitment to making "theater discipline" a part of the lives of the mentally ill. To the surprise of some at the hospital, patients seemed to like it. Not only that, by all measures their conditions improved as a result of their participation.

One example, a woman in her late seventies, had not spoken for months. Diagnosed as physically impaired, she was among the typically "hard" cases who were regularly referred to the Workshop. At first, although she came on a regular basis, her mute status continued. One day, though, during a script-writing exercise she offered a written phrase: "Establishing what is there." From that point on she became an active participant. Ladd adds, "After that she began to communicate with her therapist; staff were able to reach her. We found that her silence was caused simply by a deep depression." [3]

During the early 1970s, the relationship between Imagination Workshop and the Mount Sinai Hospital flourished. The Workshop's activities also grew to include a program at the New York State Psychiatric Hospital. There they took on the challenge of working with severely disturbed patients who were housed in "lock-up" units. The results, once again, were positive. In 1977, the program was moved to the Cornell Medical Center at New York Hospital, where it continued until a year later, when Ladd and Kessler moved to their current home in Santa Monica, California.

After the move, with their Hollywood careers taking off—Ladd landing a role in CBS' "Falcon Crest" and Kessler directing films—Imagination Workshop took a short hiatus. But once she got her feet on the ground, Ladd wasted little time beginning again. In 1979, she approached Dr. Louis Jolyon West, the chairman of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI), with a proposal to establish a new program there at the world's largest university-based clinic. With images of wild-eyed actors running amok among the Institute's patients and staff, Dr. West demurred. After more prodding by Ladd, though, he did agree to contact his New York counterparts for their impressions of the workshop's effectiveness. From them he learned that these were people who had earned their respect, "not flakes or kooks. These guys actually had a well thought-out program, a master plan that had a legitimate theoretical basis. And they were willing to be rigorously scrutinized." With these recommendations in hand, Dr. West gave the go-ahead for the workshop to begin work.

Fifteen years later, in addition to serving patients at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, the Imagination Workshop is providing ongoing programs to twelve other sites in the Los Angeles area. These sites include homeless shelters, schools and veteran's facilities, as well as community and state mental health institutions.

Part-and-parcel of this increased activity has been the ongoing struggle for survival. What began as a simple impulse of curiosity and concern by a single artist has become a complex program. Imagination Workshop, which now touches hundreds of people each year, has even acquired a small bureaucracy of its own. The focus of everybody involved, though, remains on what happens among the actors and participants working in makeshift studios and theaters. Neither Ladd, who serves as an advisor to the program, nor Jonathan Zeichner, the Workshop's artistic director, has lost sight of the simple fact that Imagination Workshop is, in the words of one workshop participant, a place where "the beast moves to a person of feeling."

An Imagination Workshop

Imagination Workshop sees itself as serving two specific groups. The first are the Workshop's participants. This group includes the seriously mentally ill, geriatric patients, homeless veterans, homeless families and youth at risk. The second is the large and often "starving" community of professional theater artists who live in Los Angeles. They feel that bringing these two communities together provides a powerful and effective resource for addressing the needs of the workshop participants, and an opportunity for artists to grow as artists while contributing to their communities.

Every session of the Imagination Workshop is planned beforehand by the three actors who are used for a typical session. These actors are all professionals. Most have extensive backgrounds in live theater, film and television. They have also been trained in the specific theater techniques that have been developed by the company for their work. Although each session is designed for the specific situation the actors will be dealing with on a particular day, they are all structured to include three basic components. Ladd describes a typical workshop:

Our class size averages around 12 to 15 participants, with an age range which goes from eleven to ninety. With the older patients, we have to be cognizant of any physical limitations they might have. We begin with a physical warm-up. We try to get each participant to relate what they are doing in the warm-up to something imaginary. We might ask them to pretend that they are a plant or an animal or some other element of nature. They get to choose. When they get into being a dandelion, with a strong stem, blowing in the wind, or a cactus deeply rooted in water, their bodies and imaginations are engaged.

The second segment is something the company has dubbed "the passing exercise." In it everybody sits in a circle and shares something with the person next to them. Barbara Weinberg, one-time Imagination Workshop administrative director, says the intent is to begin using the imagination as a means of communication.

This is a quiet time. We ask them to sit in the circle and take the hand of the person next to them and look at them. This in itself is a marvelous achievement for many of them. The idea then is to share a thought. It might be a reminiscence from childhood or a personal sentiment of some sort. It might even be giving the person a gift, like a weekend in Paris or a walk down a stream. It is a nonthreatening way to make personal contact with another person.

After the passing exercise, the company members shift into the main body of the workshop. This segment usually involves one form of improvisation or another. Ladd elaborates:

Here is where we ask them to play a character. Sometimes they choose a character they are already familiar with from another session. Other times we give them a character to play on a slip of paper. This written direction often includes a description of a need which the character might have. In most cases, the patients create characters and situations which are far removed from themselves, usually inspired by fairy tales, myths or history. Because they are so far removed, these improvisations seem to have a liberating effect on them. Many times they will discover alternate ways of dealing with problems or conflicts which they have not been able to solve in their daily lives.

When asked about problems in the classroom with disturbed patients, Ladd says the actors rely on their expertise in theater rather than trying to become amateur psychologists.

Whenever we get into what we feel is hot water we try to bring it down by dealing specifically with the character. If someone starts to cry, we might say, 'That's right, that's just the way the character would feel. That's very good. When I'm acting, that's just the way I feel.' Every time it relaxes them.

Our approach involves very little of the probing or pushing of feelings which are prevalent in other more cathartic approaches. It's important for us to keep them thinking within their characters. Then, when the real problems intervene, we have a safer context for them to work them out. Say you've got a guy who chooses to play the Beast in his improvisation with somebody who has been doing Chicken Little. You can imagine some of the conflicts which are liable to start happening. At this point, we might say to Chicken Little, 'Let's stop for a moment. What would Chicken Little like to say about this, what is she feeling?' And then we would do the same for the Beast character. It is very important that we address the character as 'she' or 'he,' and not 'you.' If we ask, 'What are you feeling?' they are most liable to say, 'Wait a minute, that's not me.' They need the safety of the character.

Many of our participants are totally isolated from society, and in particular from any artistic experience. Through the Workshop they make contact with their own artistic potential and are often able to find indirect, artistic passageways out of their painful isolation. As I said before, they feel safe enough to risk trying new forms of expression, including playfulness and humor. These are human qualities which are often left untapped through therapy.

Is Therapy a Dirty Word?

The actors with Imagination Workshop work very closely with the therapeutic staff. They are very clear, though, that what they do is not therapy. Because they are trained as professional actors and not as therapists, Ladd says they are very defensive about being identified with psychodrama or drama therapy. She continues:

In that sense, therapy is a dirty word to us, but only because it is not what we do. We feel that what we do is more effective because we concentrate on what we know best. And that is theater. If we were carpenters and we were requested to come in and teach the patients how to build a house, it would be inappropriate for us to focus on our work as a means to a therapeutic or diagnostic end. As carpenters, or as actors, we will build a house or play with a kind of seriousness and respect for the work itself. We don't get tempted to play a role for which we are not prepared.

On the other hand, we can't deny that we are working with a very special population with very severe problems. We have to know as much as we can about particular patients or the populations in general so that we can know when to ask for help or intervention. If in the course of our work a patient says he is going to jump off a cliff the next day, we don't have the luxury of treating this information as a private work. We have to use our judgment based on common sense.

Studies conducted in 1982 at NPI rated Imagination Workshop as the most beneficial among the 20 or so activities that the patients participate in at the hospital. They also showed that the workshop was more "therapeutically effective" than the use of therapeutic role playing. [4]

Ladd feels the difference can be laid to the fact that when the actors work with the patients "they are acting roles as someone else in an imaginary situation." She says that these very seriously ill patients are far more successful dealing with difficult and painful situations in an indirect manner. When progress is measured within the workshop it is defined more in terms of theater than therapy. According to Ladd, the progress they do see is often "very subtle." For her, the key remains that "the patients relate better, have more eye contact, and more fun, when they are not playing themselves." She continues:

If, in the course of a workshop, a patient started coming up with something which was therapeutically significant, I wouldn't intervene, even if I had the therapeutic skills to deal with it. If it was disturbing to either the patient or the group I would do something, but otherwise I would leave it alone. The creative process needs time to gestate in the person themselves. We have found that three weeks later—this seems to be the magic amount of time—they will most often bring that issue up in the appropriate place with their therapist. The therapist is often incredulous. But the patient knows the difference between drama therapy and drama. In drama, they are being treated as artists. Drama is a purely integrative process. Therapy is integrative as well but it must dissect before it integrates. It has to make you cognitively aware of the issues. I think the two—drama and therapy—work brilliantly together. I would never want to do the Imagination Workshop without the ability for a therapist to intervene at the appropriate time.

Patton, Merlin, Fairy Godmother, et al.

Because of the high turnover rate for hospitalized patients at NPI and other program sites, Imagination Workshop has been unable to work long enough with these populations to create and present finished plays. The NPI outpatient clinic, though, has offered that opportunity. Outpatients, because of their longer term relationship with the hospital, provide the workshop with a more stable group of participants. The result has been an annual production presented to patients and staff on the NPI stage.

The 1987 production, entitled The Road to Happiness: We Do It. You See It, evolved from skits created by the participants in their weekly workshops. Each of the 30 short scenes in the play is written for two characters that have been developed by a patient. The characters portrayed are most often familiar, somewhat archetypal personages borrowed from history, literature, mythology or popular culture. All of the scenes are separate, but tied loosely together by a common theme. The resulting mix of characters, costumes and conversations weaves an extraordinary tapestry of incongruent humor and poignancy.

One such scene involves a meeting between General Patton and the Fairy Godmother. In it Patton threatens the Fairy Godmother with a hand grenade and a court martial. The Fairy Godmother responds by magically transforming Patton into a rapidly changing series of bizarre characters. Among them are Quasimodo, Humphrey Bogart, Tarzan, James Bond, Popeye and, finally, a pacifist.

Preventative Medicine

Back when they were in New York, Ladd and Kessler had had an opportunity to conduct a series of workshops with a group of adolescents who had not responded to traditional treatment. Despite the fact that these twelve patients had been considered "problem" cases, they did very well in the Workshop. Like the many thousands of workshop participants that would follow in the years to come, they wrote and acted in their own plays. Many years later, Ladd was able to follow up and find out what had become of some of these former students. She discovered that two of them had become doctors. Others she found had become artists of one sort or another. She also learned from the "graduates" she talked to that they kept the Workshop play they had written by their beds to see them through the rough spots of their lives—"figuring if they did it once, they could do it again." [5]

Remembering this extraordinary early success, Ladd jumped at the chance to work again with adolescents when the opportunity arose at Edgemont Hospital in early 1988. This new workshop group is made up of young people (9- to 17-year-olds) who have been hospitalized as a result of severe depression. Many have attempted suicide, and have been victims of significant long-term abuse. Unfortunately, they are a part of one of the fastest growing segments of the hospital's population, a trend that is occurring across the country.

Jonathan Zeichner, the Workshop's artistic director, sees the Workshop's growing involvement with young people as providing a new and critical element to the organization's work.

Our medicine is now operating on three different levels. When we first began we were doing treatment with mental-health patients. As we expanded to other populations, we again found ourselves engaged in remedial work. Now with this younger population, we are really doing preventative medicine.

Weinberg's description of the typical young Imagination Workshop participant is daunting, if not depressing.

Many of these kids are 12 and 13 years old. They have been victims of gang rapes, incredible abuse at home or sometimes in foster care—you name it, they've been through it. A lot of them have just shut down. They are not participating in this world. When they come into the workshop it seems to give them the avenue they need to just begin to express themselves. Some of them have literally rediscovered their basic communications skills with us.

Zeichner elaborates,

What we are providing here and all the other places we work is nutrition for the soul. There is an epidemic of malnutrition. At the least, we are giving our participants a sense of community and belonging and safety, a place where they can explore and take risks and yet feel like they are working with a net. Beyond that we are providing tools and access to their own sources of problem solving, communication and socialization.

It is ironic that many of the professional actors involved with Imagination Workshop feel that some of their best work has been done in workshops with patients in mental hospitals. Ladd feels that the benefits of what their actors do for the most depressed and confused among us should be available to everyone. She considers the absence of opportunities for the active exercise of our individual and collective imaginations in schools and other community institutions to be unhealthy. Her dream is to create an Imagination Workshop Institute that would begin to address this need. Through such an institute, she and her staff would make the techniques and skills developed through 25 years of work available to other artists and other institutional settings. Hopefully, Ladd's dream will become a reality. If it doesn't, it will certainly not be for lack of "character muscles" being exercised by Imagination Workshop artists and more than 40,000 Imagination Workshop participants.

Notes

1 From brochure "Imagination Workshop, a Theater Arts Organization Serving the Mental Health Community." [return]

2 Lyle Kessler, quoted in Kerry Platman, "The Show Goes On for Mentally Ill," Los Angeles Times, View, April 19, 1983. [return]

3. Margaret Ladd, quoted in Platman, ibid. [return]

4. Ching-piao Chien, MD., and Marcia Schwartz, BA., "Adult Development Group Research Update on Imagination Workshop," preliminary report, UCLA Neuro-psychiatric Institute, February, 1982. [return]

5. Jan Stevens, "Flights of Fancy Reach the Mentally Ill," Evening Outlook, Los Angeles, July 1, 1986. [return]

This article originally appeared in High Performance magazine, Fall 1994.

Original CAN/API publication: September 2002