Sally Dorothy Bailey, MFA, MSW, RDT/BCT

I am a Registered Drama Therapist and direct the drama therapy program at Kansas State University.  Drama Therapy uses drama processes like creative drama, improvisation, and role play, as well as theater performance to help clients understand themselves and other people better.  Drama is a natural way that all humans learn, grow, and experiment with the world around them.  Everyone begins to use dramatic play between the ages of 18 months and 3 years to explore the world around them and try out new behaviors.  In fact, Vygotsky, the Russian developmental psychologist, believed that dramatic play was the major way children developed social skills and the ability to use language and then to think.  Because of this people involved in drama therapy are able to understand in a deeper, more thorough way emotional and social information and can actually practice new skills (rehearsal for life)! 

Drama Therapy is also useful with people who traditional talk therapy has difficulty reaching -- like young children or people who are non-verbal or do not have a strong grasp of the native language the therapy is being conducted in.  This is because in drama we are also using pantomime, facial expression, body language, and movement, not just words.

If you want to know more about drama therapy, a good place to go is to the website of the National Association for Drama Therapy at www.nadt.org.  NADT also has an annual national conference the first weekend of November each year.  Anyone is welcome to go and there are discounts for students.  It is a wonderful way to see a lot of different drama therapy techniques in action and to meet people who are doing drama therapy across the U.S. 

I am very interested in the brain!  The discoveries in neuroscience over the last 20 years have really begun to demonstrate how and why the arts are effective means of communication with ourselves and others, how empathy works, how we learn, and many other fascinating things.  Probably my favorite aspect of brain science is mirror neurons which go to the heart of performance and why drama therapy works.  If you have never read anything about mirror neurons, I recommend articles and books by Marco Iacoboni, Giaccomo Rizzolatti, and Vittorio Gallese.  Even though they are all Italian scientists, they write very clearly and well in English.

I am dedicated to creating access to the arts for all people.  As a drama therapist, one of my jobs before I became a college professor, was as the Arts Access Director of an arts center for children pre-school through high school in Bethesda, MD (then called the Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts, now called Imagination Stage).  I discovered and continue to believe that everyone is creative and has the right to participate in the arts -- and CAN!  I have written one of the very few books about how to make accommodations and adaptations for people with a variety of disabilities -- "Barrier-Free Theatre."

I am also fascinated by story -- how we crave stories and need to hear them, tell them, and share them.  I am doing research on the need for stories and its uses and I think that will be my next book.

I received a really wonderful theatre education at UT.  I wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere else to get my undergraduate training in theatre!  One of my favorite things about UT was the fantastic collection in the various libraries -- anything I wanted to find, I found!!  Amazing!