Role-play
Angela MUSC Ă
Institute of Educational Sciences, BucharestHistory
Role-play originates in psychodrama, created for therapeutic purposes by J. L. Moreno
(1892-1974), American psycho-sociologist of Romanian origin. Moreno created “the
improvisation theatre” in 1921 and is the author of Who will survive? (1934),
Psychodrama, vol. 1 (1946), The theatre of spontaneity (1947), Group psychotherapy and
psychodrama (1965).
Theoretical background
Moreno’s theory is based on the idea that every person has a creative potential, and
psychodrama favours its discovery and activation. With its creative possibilities based on
a play, psychodrama sets the conditions for evoking and experimenting with life
situations with a view to opening new perspectives in self-knowledge and development.
Psychodrama is currently used as clinical intervention and preventive therapy, supportive
in crisis situations. Of the principles psychodrama is based on, we mention:
- constructing a therapeutic situation that should integrate all means of life and
existence, beginning with the universal ones (time, space, reality, cosmos)
and down to the details of personal life;