Rising up…..again and…..again: sustaining spontaneity in a changing world.

Monday 22 January, 9.30am – 5.00pm, 7:00pm – 9pm
Tuesday 23 January, 9.30am – 5.00pm

Fee: $570 AUD
Maximum Participants: 16

In 1923, J.L. Moreno proposed that spontaneity would be the main subject of the schools of the future (Das Stegreiftheater – The Theatre of Spontaneity). In 2023, a hundred years on, spontaneity is well-recognised as a foundation concept of the psychodrama method. 

We know that spontaneity generates spontaneity in others and, as a catalyst of human creativity, it propels us toward our vision for a progressive future. It can’t be stored up or taken forward from the past; it is experienced in the present through a warming up process. For psychodramatists, the training of spontaneity is at the core of our personal, social, and cultural development. 

Spontaneity involves a letting go of the old and known and a movement into the new and unknown. This is not always a smooth process – there are times when we lose spontaneity as we face the challenges that life presents. It’s heartening to know that we can warm up again, and then again to act with vitality, relevance and daring in the here-and-now, as one moment unfolds into the next.  Developing spontaneity builds our ability to respond adequately to the instability and insecurity of the moment and we are better able to hold our nerve.

In this spontaneity training workshop, we will use the creative methods from psychodrama to explore the personal and social factors that sustain and constrain spontaneity in an ever-shifting present. We will work in a spirit of play and experimentation. The focus will be on developing our abilities as protagonists, auxiliaries, group members and citizens to respond freshly and creatively to our changing world. 

Biographies

Bev Hosking has been actively pursuing playful and experimental approaches for us to develop our capacities to respond creatively to our current social, cultural and political realities. She is committed to bringing spontaneity and creativity to all aspects of life and work.

Bev is an experienced counsellor, trainer, group worker and supervisor who has been in private practice since 1987. She is a TEP (Trainer, Educator and Practitioner) and the Director of the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington Campus of Psychodrama Aotearoa New Zealand (PANZ).

Martin Putt came to psychodrama in 1998 to further the spontaneity, creativity and play he found in the exhilaration of physical theatre improvisation and Playback Theatre. Deeply stimulated by his training in spontaneity with Max Clayton and his encounters within AANZPA, he completed his training as a psychodramatist in 2012. 

He is a trainer-in-training (TEPit) at the Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland Campus of PANZ and seeks to enhance spontaneity, his own and that of others, by combining actions methods with humour, tenderness and playfulness in both his work as a trainer and, day-to-day, as a psychotherapist.