A Bridge to Transformation
She was a troubled adolescent when she entered Bridges, a six-month residential chemical dependency treatment program for girls ages 14-18 offered by The Counseling Center in Portsmouth, Ohio. Along with addiction, her history included an unstable home life and rejection by peers at school. At first, she made little progress, showing no emotion and resisting therapy.
There is a celebration.
Beauty is restored.
Knowledge and experience
have caused them to grow
like the beauty
that exists all around them.
from a poem by a Bridges participant
Then she found her bridge—creative drama sessions with Jean Howat Berry, a theater artist and mask-maker who serves as an Ohio Arts Council teaching artist. Peggy Gemperline, who directs the Bridges program, says the breakthrough came when the young woman had the opportunity to write and perform a monologue about what her life had been like.
"Listening to her," says Gemperline, "we could tell she had really reached the other side of it. She completed the program, and the last I heard, she is doing well."
Back to Beauty
With Berry's help, the girls made masks to wear in a play that they also wrote and performed at the Southern Ohio Museum. The subject was the Greek myth of Persephone.
"They understood the underworld where Persephone found herself," says Berry. "The choice to return to beauty was such a moving, symbolic moment. They designed a litter to carry Persephone back into the sun."
The audience, which included family members and adult women from another program at The Counseling Center, joined in a group discussion following the performance. The girls stayed in character as they responded to questions.
The Power of Process
Creating the play incorporated learning in visual art, music, poetry, myth, costume and movement. The process of "becoming" that led to the production, says Berry, was the real performance. The girls explored literature, writing and drama and talked about their lives and the challenges of becoming women. They often established relationships that aided recovery.
"Each day, changes occurred in these girls, whether they knew it or not," she says. "And they grew."
The Magic of Masks
Bridges had used creative drama before, including residencies with OAC artist Roger Jerome. He and Gemperline developed approaches for using creative drama to help the girls explore some family roles that often accompany addiction—the hero, the worrier and the "bad girl," for example.
Theater is a wonderful medium for helping girls express their feelings, as well as process some of the things that have happened to them without additional trauma," says Gemperline. "It sets their imaginations on fire."
Berry's mask-making added a new dimension to the program. During her twelve-week residency, funded by the OAC, the Portsmouth Arts Council and private donors, Berry created masks for use in role-playing during group therapy sessions.
"The recovery process tends to be a game of hide and seek," says Berry. "Being able to cover the face provides a sense of security. Often the girls are able to express more."
But self-revelation is only the beginning. "The goal," says Berry, "is transformation."
Phersu, the name of Berry's Dayton studio, conveys what she is trying to do: "Phersu is an Etruscan word meaning the synergy between who the individual is and who the individual becomes in the mask—a whole new creative being. The girls had to grow into the characters they played and animate the roles. And when they removed the masks later in the process, they were symbolically taking a step toward their essential selves."
Theater artist and mask-maker Jean Howat Berry worked with adolescent girls who were battling drug and alcohol addiction. They wrote, produced and performed a play based on the Greek myth of Persephone. They also made the masks they wore during the performance.
This article was published in October 2007, Volume 4, Issue 1.
