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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 09 Oct 2007
Time: 15:10:42 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.19
Dear Chanel, Good question. First, I'd suggest you pose it to the authors of the paper, "The use of drama-therapy in the rehabilitation of stuttering patients"by Donatella Tomaiuoli, Francesca Del Gado, Paola Falcone, Calogero Marchese, Eleonora Pasqua, and Maria Grazia Spinetti. Yet you are asking about one of the "professor's" opinion. Here's mine. I read the article and found it very interesting. stuttering clients were treated in traditional ways and then brought into a drama component that lasted several months. Even though a large number of them were fearful or nervous about appearing on stage, most found that they rose to the challenge and did very well. I have never used this sort of therapy, although I have worked with one or two stutterers who were actors. I suspect that these people were different than many of the stutterers the Italian authors describe. They had no difficulty during acting, but their stuttering emerged when the were NOT playing a role. I would have to agree with the authors that the drama training that their clients received would clearly provide important practice in verbal and nonverbal communication, voice projection, body awareness, grace in movements, assertive speaking, and so on. All of these skills could enhance transfer and maintenance. And certainly the emotional "high" that would follow the first successful play would generate a the positive feeling of having met a difficult challenge. Personally, I would be reluctant to put all stutterers through this regimen since many of them might wish to meet other, equally difficult, challenges, such as successfully interviewing for a new job, reading a story to one's child or grandchild, asking someone for a date, and so on. I am also inclined to think that the time involved to learn and present a play might be too much for some clients. (Of course, I recognize that the reason for my caution might be that I have never done much acting.) A clinician might teach all stutterers to ride horses or learn to dance as part of therapy, and such activities could have value. But ultimately, most people come to speech therapy to learn to speak with less stuttering (or no stuttering) in their daily lives. We may well be doing them a favor by helping them learn that those might be goals that are (1) hard to achieve in the long run or (2) could actually make progress difficult (if the aim is to simply be a more successful avoider of stuttering), but the fact remains that clients are the ones who should decide whether or not they wish to go along with the clinicians' agendas. If possible, I try to give clients what they want, but I try to tell them honestly what they will likely gain and give up by working toward those goals. If my suggested goals are quite different from those of my clients, I make that clear to them, recognizing that they may not wish to partake of what I can offer. Hopefully, this makes sense and provides at least a partial answer to your question. Best wishes, Ken