Open Session Guidelines

[HV Psychodrama]

A number of people have asked for our guidelines for open sessions and ideas about PR so here they are:

Hudson Valley Chapter of the ASGPP OPEN SESSION GUIDELINES

Introduction; sixteen years ago Elsie Gold, MPS CP, began a series of open sessions at Boughton Place, in Highland, NY, where the Original Moreno Stage had been resurrected. About twelve years ago she handed it over to the local chapter of the ASGPP, and Rebecca Walters, MS TEP, Toni Horvatin, CSW and Fred Harris have been organizing these monthly demonstration sessions. The goal of the open session is to introduce psychodrama to the community and offer professionals/ The following is information that we have pulled together from our experience producing opens sessions for the last twelve years.

1) The Directors:  Open sessions present psychodrama to the public.  An open session is often the first and possibly only time other professionals and community members will be experiencing the method.  For this reason, they should be directed by the most experienced psychodramatists who have national credentials and state licensure, when possible and not used as practice sessions for students.

2) Choosing a Topic: Be Aware of your Audience…who are you hoping to attract and who is on your mailing list. For example, you might be  trying to build a mailing list of folks interested in personal growth. That is a very different audience than trying to build a mailing list of people interested in professional training.
        If you are going to have a title or a theme for publicity purposes, keep them light and future oriented. “My Mother, Myself” or “Fathers and Dads” might be great titles for an all day/weekend workshop, but is probably not a good choice for an open session because you really do not want to do early childhood stuff at an open session. Mid Summer Magic, Warming Up to the New Year, Forgiveness (with the focus of having people in the session think about who they need to be forgiven by, rather then the other way around), Stepping into the future, Creativity and Spontaneity, all have been successful titles. We often use the season or holidays as a theme. The trick is to use something around which a warm up can be created that isn’t likely to turn into a trauma drama. 

The General Public: We have found the use of themes to be useful in advertising open sessions. Seasons can often provide a cue. ..."Springing into Action”, “Warming Up in Winter” “Mid Summer Magic”, etc. Holidays provide “Gratitude and Thankfullness”, “Miracles in Everyday Life”. Anything that will allow you to choose from a variety of warm-ups that will lead into a psychodrama.

Sociodramas: These need to have very specific themes as a way of drawing people in. They are also great for libraries, and PTAs (dealing with difficult teenagers, archetypal psychodramas, etc).  

We have found more folks at our open sessions are interested in psychodramas than sociodrama unless something is happening locally or nationally that makes them want to address a common issue. For example, we turned our Sept 01 psychodrama open session into a sociodrama about the world trade center with the consent of everyone who showed up.

2) The Time and Place:
Open sessions should run for no more than two and a half hours on a weekday evening, and no more than three hours on a weekend evening. The goal is to offer a psychodrama experience, not a workshop.
For advertising purposes it is best to offer a series, rather than a one-time event. Also, the consistency of seeing the event listed every month can draw people in. Pick a consistent time and place. If you don’t want to commit to a whole year, you might think in terms of every month for three months on a specific day of a specific week (we do them on the third Fridays of each month) or the same evening of the week for three weeks running or every other week for six weeks.
Make sure the space you use has ample parking. If you can, use a familiar and public place like a school, library, church or college. We ran some in Albany at an Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment center and had a lot of folks from that agency, but not a lot from anywhere else. It was too identified with the rehab. Next time we are going to use a more public space like a college or a meeting room in a church, library or school.

4) PR For OPEN SESSIONS

You must advertise and get some publicity if you want to get known. Design a flier that you can post around. Make sure there is a phone number so folks can call with questions. Keep a mailing list with email addresses so you can send a postcard out with several open sessions listed on them and then email reminders about ten days before hand. Make sure all your events are listed in the local newspapers, magazines and radio that have free listings. See if the newspapers will write an article about psychodrama. 
   Contact local colleges and invite their students for free, etc. We often do free demonstrations for college classes and then invite them to an open session. Offer free in services to mental health centers (for their staff) and then invite them to the open session. It helps build your mailing list.
  	By holding the open session in a public place like a church, daycare center or library, you can ask them to include your flier with their mailings. Posting a flier on their bulletin board will inform their members, who might be more likely to attend something in a space they consider their own. 
	
    Keep it cheap enough for folks not to have to think about it. We charge $6. $4 for seniors and full time students. Your goal is to cover your costs, not to make money. 

Focus on specific populations :If you have a counter cultural area, does an open session that might appeal to them and post it heavily in the areas that those folks frequent. If there is a big new age community, let your theme and your warm up be something that would appeal to them; angels, energy, what have you. Psychodrama open sessions can be focused to your recovery community by doing one on one of the steps. Call it Making Amends. Send fliers to all the AA meetings, substance abuse treatment facilities. 

You want to get your event listed in your local papers. See if they will do an article on you and the
open sessions. I don’t think asking folks to RSVP is a good idea. It discourages those who might come spur of the moment. If you begin with four or five, and they like it, invite them back and tell them they can bring a friend for free. The idea is you want to build a mailing list of interested folks. You can make sure you have at least a half a dozen people by asking your friends/students/colleagues to attend.

Now here is the weird thing about advertising. Even if the first few open sessions have no one show up, just getting the word psychodrama in print is to your advantage. You may need to run several series of open sessions before it begins to take off. We usually get anywhere from 15-20 people at ours. We have had as few as six and as many as 45 (that was when a local prof told his students that they could do three papers, or two papers and come to an open session)


  If you are doing bibliodrama my suggestion would be to connect with as many liberal Jewish congregations as you can find...bibliodrama is a form of midrash, Jews are quite comfortable in exploring sacred text this way. When you go to talk to them, bring along Peter Pitzele’s book “Scripture Windows.” Then I would contact your liberal protestant groups such as Unitarians and Quakers, ...this should all be for free to start. You might see if there are some liberal catholic communities in your area. You want to avoid fundamentalist protestant groups; they are very uneasy about doing anything with or to scripture.   




The Actual Session
1)The director should be introduced by whoever is hosting, but it is a good idea for the director to present them self a little, could be your connection to psychodrama, something about how your drive up was, anything to let folks get to ‘know’ you a little. That is helpful if there are a number of folks who are new to PD. Anyway, it often helps with the director’s warm up to talk a little.

2 )We think it is important to talk a little about Moreno and do a brief history of psychodrama, especially how Virginia Satir, Eric Berne, Fritz Perl, etc attended his sessions in NYC and was inspired by his work. This is an important especially if there are grad students or professionals at the session.

3) Do a little sociometry to figure out who knows whom and if there are sub groups. For example, many of the people who come to our Open Sessions at Boughton Place are regulars. They come every month. Being in training groups together connects others. Sometimes there are groups of grad students from one of the local colleges. Which leaves some who are there for the first time and /or know no one at all. It is important to acknowledge all of this. Even a simple raising of hands helps makes the sociometry visible. You can also ask who knows more than 10 people. Who knows between five and ten, between 2-5, one other, no one? It is also interesting to get folks to acknowledge if they have ever seen a psychodrama before, if there are trained psychodramatists in the room, etc.…

4) Let folks know they may participate as much or as little as they like. Explain what the session will look like; warm up/action/ sharing

 
5) Keep your warm up fairly short. The group wants to see a whole psychodrama, not just a little piece. They also may be tired if you are running this on a weekday evening.  Keep your warm up focused on the here and now, or on the future. DO NOT GO INTO EARLY CHILDHOOD STUFF. Otherwise someone may get picked to be protagonist who wants to work on trauma. Open sessions are neither the time or place to do so.  Offer a referral to an ongoing group if that is what they want to work on, but remind them this is a public arena, not a therapy group. If some one is chosen to be protagonist and begins to move into this area, it is helpful to find out if they are in therapy, if they have a support system here at the session with them, and to help them bracket this deeply sensitive material to be addressed another day. We have done such things as actually pull them out of the scene and have a conversation with them about where and when they could explore this material in a safer and more productive arena, and then renegotiate the contract as to what it is we will work on that evening. Create a structure to bracket issues that are better worked on in a therapy session.

We are most comfortable using an action sociodrama as a way of finding a protagonist. Trust the wisdom of the group to pick the issue that they are most ready to deal with.

6) Allow enough time for complete deroling and sharing. We don’t want folks leaving in role or upset, with no place to take their feelings. If time is running short and there seems to be a lot of sharing left some options are to have people share in dyads or small groups after some sharing with the protagonist, and/or end the evening letting folks know that you’ll hang around for a while in case people have a need to process more. Hopefully there will be other psychodramatists there who will be happy to help out if needed by providing ears and hearts. Make sure you have some referral sources. 

6A: We have begun to remind folks in the group that there are trained psychodramatists available to talk to if anything came up for them that fills unfinished.  Directors often invite them to contact them if needed, or you can give out the contact info for your program or any of the other certified psychodramatists present and willing. Sometimes we ask, if you are a Psychodramatist raise your hands, and then say something to the effect of “anyone is welcome to speak to any of these folks if you are left with concerns or questions.

7) The entire thing should end sometime about two hours to two hours and a half after you begin, which leaves some time for cookies and juice. Our sessions are called for 7:30; we begin them at 7:40 and try to have them finish about 9:45 or so. If we run past ten people begin to leave because they are tired after a long day at work.



PR For OPEN SESSIONS

* You must advertise and get some publicity if you want to get known. 
* Design a flier that you can post around. 
* Keep a mailing list with email addresses so you can send a postcard out with several open  
    sessions listed on it.  Mail it out three to four weeks ahead of time.
* Email reminders about ten days before. 
* Make sure all your events are listed in the local newspapers, magazines and radio that have free listings. 
* See if the newspapers will write an article about you and psychodrama. 
* Contact local colleges and invite their students for free. 
* Do free demonstrations for college classes and then invite them to an open
session.
* Offer free in services to mental health centers (for their staff) and then invite them to the open session. It helps build your mailing list.
* Keep it cheap, like $5-8. with a discount for students. 

Focus on specific populations :
* If you have a counter cultural area, do an open session that might appeal to them and post it heavily in  the areas that those folks frequent. 
* If there is a big new age community, let your theme and your warm up be something that would appeal to them; angels, energy, what have you. 
* Psychodrama open sessions can be focused to your recovery community by doing one on the fourth step (I think that is the number). Call it Making Amends. Send fliers to all the AA meetings, substance abuse treatment facilities.

* You can also create the evening based on the season of the year..."Springing into Action, New Beginnings, etc. 

I don’t think asking folks to RSVP is such a good idea. It discourages those who might come spur of the moment. If you begin with four or five, and they like it, invite them back and tell them they can bring a friend for free. The idea is you want to build a mailing list of interested folks.


You can have an open session that focuses on a specific psychodrama technique. For example do one on the empty chair. Advertise it to the mental health community by describing the value of this innovative tool for their psychotherapy toolbox.

Sociodramas are great for libraries, and PTAs (dealing with difficult teenagers, archetypal psychodramas,etc). We have found more folks are interested in psychodramas than sociodrama unless something is happening locally or nationally that makes them want to address a common issue. For example, we turned our Sept 01 psychodrama open session into a sociodrama about the world trade center with the consent of everyone who showed up. But this may have to do with our mailing list and our community.

 If you are doing bibliodrama my suggestion would be to connect with as many liberal Jewish congregations as you can find...bibliodrama is a form of midrash, Jews are
quite comfortable in exploring sacred text this way. When you go to talk to them, bring along Peter Pitzele’s book “Scripture Windows.” Then I would contact
your liberal protestant groups such as Unitarians and Quakers...this should all be for free to start. You might see if there are some liberal catholic communities in your area. You want to avoid fundamentalist protestant groups; they are very uneasy about
doing anything with or to scripture.   

The secret to good PR is to be consistent. Get the word out there and often.




















-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20080103/496c4968/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20080103/496c4968/attachment-0001.html