Parents, Who's running YOUR show?
Taboo Theatre leads parents out of the dogma doo and into Personalized Parenting
Who's running your parenting show? Dr. Laura? Dr. Phil? Dr. Spock? Is it the stay-at-home, Brownie troop-leading, Mormon mom next door or that news anchor with the triplets? Or maybe it goes deeper than that--your mother maybe? Your own fear of inadequacy? Co-authors, Joan Bechtel and Linda Cohen, want to help women take back the right. The right to find their own truth and trust their own wisdom.
"We're still fighting the archetypal Madonna/Whore Siamese twins. Those two have more disguises than Barbie and Midge," warns Joan Bechtel, co-author of a MOTHERHOOD CONFIDENTIAL and Personalized Parenting Workshop Leader, "and theyre even more ubiquitous, providing the ultimate demarcation line between the Good and the Bad Mother in many cultures. It's those stark blacks and whites that lead to a Clash of the Subliminal Titans on the Dark Side of the Psyche. The death match between what we think we're supposed to be and who we really are. We all have our personal dogma demons telling us what kind of mother we're supposed to be.
But what if you cant live inside a dogma dollhouse? What if, once you become a mother. you cant shed all those ugly pounds of experience, wisdom and character you've put on over the years to squeeze into the skin tight Maternal Perfection Suit? Maybe you don't want to cover your "flaws" and deviations from the norm with a thick layer of clown white. "Well, congratulations!" says Bechtel. "That just means you're conscious!"
"In primitive times, we probably did need all the stonings and conch shell blasts to warn us against trespassing against tribal law, but today dogmas really hinder us more than help us." According to Bechtel, anthropologists and psychologists like Freud, Jung, and Fromm have described how dogma and the coping mechanisms like repression, displacement, and projection cause as many problems as they prevent in today's modern psyche. But these forces usually do their business unseen, and what works invisibly works powerfully.
"Thats where psychodrama comes in. Or, our version anyway--sort of Psychodrama Lite. To make the invisible visible. To bring the subliminal factors that effect our decision-making to consciousness.
"Its not a 60s Synanon thing. But theatre can do things our linear thinking cannot. In fact, role-playing can release the fear that keeps logic immobilized. We all want logic to work for us. But when we feel threatened, that's not the part of the brain that can go to work.
"You can see this in pictures where they map brain activity. When threat dominates, only one little area of the less developed part of the brain lights up. It's as if logic can't get through the mob to help the victim, because the animal instinctual reaction to threat has shut down all other functions. So obviously we cant make logical decisions about parenting--or anything else--if fear is in charge. But with imagination we can change things. Imagination can act as a stepping stone between fear and logic.
"We can look at a scary parenting issue, a big SHOULDNT and we can dis-empower it for a time. Perhaps I want to keep my child in a family bed but I know my family or culture would disapprove of that. So I take that towering Taboo against "making your child overly dependent" and personify it, give it the shape of Shiva the Destroyer, perhaps. Now the next step is to take it down a notch. Put Shiva in boxer shorts or a French maids uniform. Remove its fancy headpiece and sit it down in a lawnchair. These forces are used to dictating to us. But we want to dethrone them and ask them just to take a seat at the table.
"It's usually the child in us that doesn't get listened to. It gets shouted down by these dogma dictators. When we stage a conflict in Taboo Theatre and give each person a part of the psyche to play, the child part usually gets sent off to the bathroom or put in a corner. The child is the part in touch with feelings, so we're in trouble if we smother or ignore that part.
"Like the twelfth fairy in Sleeping Beauty. If you ignore a part of the psyche--if you don't invite it to the table because it makes you uncomfortable or you disapprove of that feeling--it doesn't just go away. Repression actually gives it more energy--negative energy--and it eventually comes back to bite you. Hard. Without that child part we can really become lost. So what we do in the group then is bring the child to the center, so the person's needs and feelings can be central.
Taboo Theatre makes the invisible visible by giving inner dynamics shape and substance, so participants can get a look at what's going on inside and make changes if they choose. For those who want to move toward authentic parenting, Taboo Theatre is a showcase for the truth.
