RichDrama - Blog #SociodramaRichDrama - Blog #Sociodramahttps://www.richdrama.com/blog/tag/sociodramaSun, 12 Apr 2026 00:43:34 -0700http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Uplifted, Transformed and Healed!]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/uplifted-transformed-and-healed
Thank you again, Rich. I feel so uplifted myself and I am happy to see how you transformed and healed the residents. I certainly felt God’s presence and action in your work with them and their response. 
--Retta Blaney
Head of Marketing
EastView Independent Senior Living Residence
Owned and operated by The Salvation Army
Observation after Rich led residents in a sociodrama.
New York City
]]>Fri, 10 Jan 2020 19:28:00 -0500<![CDATA[Lamplighter Guild for Creative Disciplines]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/lamplighter-guild-for-creative
I've been praying for years that I could teach there, and recently that prayer was answered, and it was much more fulfilling than I'd imagined! Isn't that always the way with the Lord?

I guided almost forty students as they created four separate sketches through sociodrama.

After our final rehearsal I suggested that two or three of them should close us in prayer. Over an hour later they reluctantly went to bed. One of our students realized her headache was gone. We prayed and laughed and wept in the joy of the Lord. Revival! Sweet revival! Friday morning they announced that lunch would be delayed 15 minutes, so Mark Hamby, the director of the Guild invited students up to testify. Within seconds a student behind me said, "Your prayer was answered!" The night before I'd prayed that our students would get the chance to share! On the shuttle to the bus station Peter Fecteau, his son and I counted up 24 distinct miracles we'd observed this week. Moments later He made it an even 25! I was able to get the earlier bus, and the gentleman waived the change fee!

I just got a note from one of the students saying he and some others are going to collaborate on an audio drama! Praise the Lord!

Here's the film our students created:


I helped with casting and wrangling extras.

It was so great to work alongside longtime friends David Sanborn and John Fornof, and to get to know the rest of the wonderful faculty!

Here are some of the photos I took that week.

Visit www.LamplighterGuild.com for more photos and info.


I'm happy to do workshops anywhere in the world: www.RichDrama.com/Workshops.

]]>Thu, 16 Aug 2018 15:39:00 -0400<![CDATA[TMI]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/tmi
No, that doesn't stand for "too much information" in this case. It's the Territorial Music Institute for the Salvation Army. I was a special guest, which meant (among other things) that I was featured in a special service, along with the other special guests. We each taught each other something in our discipline in about 30 seconds and then expected the special guest of another discipline to perfect it by the time the 30 seconds was up. It was great fun!

Some of my favorite moments were down by the lake for "Sealed Orders." Students and faculty would get their orders, and when the command was given to open them we would read the devotional in an outdoor amphitheater overlooking a lake and a glowing Cross. It was amazing. As often as I was able, I stuck around to pray with students who lingered. There were some really awesome breakthroughs!

My main responsibility was to direct one of the drama groups in creating and preparing a drama for the final performance through sociodrama, and I think it turned out very well. It is a part of a new series of sketches I'm developing called Theatre for Revival. I think you'll see why:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0gOhNAhbDOM?start=1279

We're about to open registration for the Rocky Mountain Christian Filmmakers Camp. Sign up to get the announcement.
]]>Sun, 29 Jul 2018 20:19:00 -0400<![CDATA[Conservatory Finale]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/conservatory-finale
The final performance of our students at the Salvation Army's Territorial Arts Ministry Conservatory is now online. You can watch the full finale below. My students' performance, which we created via sociodrama based on the demoniac and jailer at Philippi, is at 39:25. You have to watch it on the  main page to move to different times. 

Instructor Kathryn Higgins was my theatre student in Toronto at another Salvation Army Conservatory. There's not much I taught her about dance, but her piece is at 35:38, based on one of my favorite verses: Isaiah 40:31. When they were asked for a title for their piece one of the dancers in the group heard that chapter and verse from Isaiah, not knowing what it was. It fits the choreography beautifully!

The pieces directed by my former student, Brad Cain, begin at 46:26, 1:03:05, 1:07:25, and 1:39:20.

I'm quite certain I taught Ryan Livingston absolutely nothing about visual arts, but he has incorporated drama into the presentation of his program's work. You can see that at 1:09:42 and 2:04:25. The form of the performance in the second section may be a world premiere! Ryan was inspired by sandbox art. He knew he wouldn't have time to set up a sandbox for the finale, so he created the work you'll see. I think it's unbelievable!

Mabel López-Cuevas attended one of my sociodrama workshops at a Christians in Theatre Arts Conference in Puerto Rico. She directed her students in creating one of my favorite choreodramas, which you can see at 1:33:43.

Students from the worship track created a song to go with our theme verse,  Acts 1:8. You can hear the students who created the song singing it at 27:52 and all of our students singing it at 2:09:26.

Again, you have to watch it on the main page to move to different times. 

https://livestream.com/accounts/245732/events/7460854/player?width=400&height=225&enableInfoAndActivity=false&defaultDrawer=&autoPlay=false&mute=false

I teach annually at the  Rocky Mountain Christian Filmmakers Camp.  Subscribe to get a note that registration is open.
]]>Mon, 14 Aug 2017 02:19:00 -0400<![CDATA[Celebrate Fellowship]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/celebrate-fellowship
Rich and Pastor Joyce on the
Sea of Galilee.
Joyce and I were tasked with creatively summarizing Westchester Chapel's year-and-a-half-long sermon series, The Great Gift of Fellowship. I used a sociogram (though I didn't tell them that!), which is a tool developed through sociodrama. The results were fantastic!

I opened by telling a bit more about my performance for gang members imprisoned on Riker's Island: www.RichDrama.com/FatherDaughterDance.

Pastor Jim Warren shared announcements, and he mentioned Celebrity Confessions. You can find out more about the last two performances (July 24 and August 28) at www.RichDrama.com/CelebrityConfessions.

Click the arrow below, or if you're reading this in an email you can  click this link, to play the service:

https://archive.org/embed/JoyceAndRichCelebrateFellowship072317

This service is available for download free on iTunes, where you can also subscribe to our podcast. Search for "Westchester Chapel" on the iTunes Store.

If you want to more about starting a relationship with Jesus Christ visit www.WestchesterChapel.org/Salvation.
]]>Sun, 23 Jul 2017 23:37:00 -0400<![CDATA[The High School Final]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/the-high-school-final
Joyce and I with Cindy on a recent
visit she took to NYC.
Since about 1994 I've been performing in public schools through the invitation of Cindy Sebring.

That year I drove (back when I tried to keep a car in NYC) down to the DC area for a Christians in Theatre Arts conference. I remember the rain was also driving, and my windshield wipers weren't staying up with the volume. I ended up getting there in the middle of a performance by Frank Runyon, the third one-man play I'd seen, after Curt Cloninger and Roger Nelson. A gentleman in the back of the auditorium welcomed me, and after the performance we struck up a conversation. He knew some folks at the Lamb's Church of the Nazarene where I was an intern at the time. He asked me where I was staying, and I told him I hadn't figured that out yet. I didn't tell him, but I was hoping someone would give me a place to stay so I wouldn't have to spend a significant percentage of my savings on a hotel! He invited me to stay with his family, and to join them on Sunday at their church. 

That Sunday I met Cindy. Soon I was invited to perform at a retreat that church was hosting. Cindy offered to drive me to the retreat from DC. 

Soon after the retreat started Friday evening I told the pastor who would be preaching Sunday morning that I'd be happy to write a fresh piece to go with his sermon, but he didn't know what passage he'd be using. At about 10pm Saturday night he said he'd be preaching on John:15:1-17, about the Vine and the Branches. I stayed up until about 3am writing (and rehearsing) The Legend of Billy Branch, which came with some musical interludes. I discovered the next morning that Cindy's room was next to mine and she heard me singing as I rehearsed the piece! 

I'm pretty sure it was on that trip, despite her loss of sleep, that Cindy invited me to perform and teach workshops at her public high school for the first time. In those 23 years she only invited me if her classes were well-behaved, but there weren't many years I missed. 

I just returned from my final performance for her students. She is retiring in a couple of months. It was a very special trip, because these opportunities have been priceless.

This time around I performed The Fall, my one-act piece based on the novel Les Misérables. I shared it with three classes, and after each I followed up with a sociodrama. The first one was short, so I just based it on Les Miz. I engaged them in an exercise which allowed them to express the most valuable thing to them. The winning vote was, interestingly enough, food. My one-act revolves around the bishop forgiving Jean Valjean for stealing his silver, after which the bishop gives him his silver candlesticks. In our scenario the bishop character was a homeless man. Jean Valjean stole his pizza. A police officer brought him back, but Jean Valjean said, "If he stole from a homeless man he must really need the pizza more than I do," at which point he gave him a $5. All of this came from the students. 

The other two classes had just read Fahrenheit 451, a novel about censorship. The title is the temperature at which paper burns. The main character is a fireman, meaning he sets fire to books. I told them some of the discoveries we've made visiting  Cuba, China,  Russia, and two borders of  North Korea. 

The first of those two classes did a sociodrama based on a student who was told by his parents that if he didn't cut his hair he would not be allowed to cut his hair until after he graduated from high school in a couple of years. Afterward I drew from another story they'd read: Death of a Salesman. I pointed out that Willy Loman drew his identity in part from his son, Biff. Tim Keller uses this as an illustration in a sermon on the Breastplate of Righteousness. Then I pointed out that parents who, regardless of motives, have the right to raise their children in the ways they think best, but dictators controlling what their people are able to read and say is a very different thing. 

The last class also brought up a parental scenario, but I brought up the difference between parents and dictators right up front. The students ended up exploring a world in which it was no longer legal for us to speak to people outside of our nation. The main character was on the phone with a friend in Russia. The police knocked on her door and told her they discovered that she was on an international call. She hid her phone, but the police did a sweep of her home and discovered a computer, which the enactors decided in the moment was also illegal. She complained that she had purchased the computer when it was legal to have one. One of the officers told her she should have thrown it out the window when the law was passed. (I pointed out that this was an SAT word posted in the halls of their school: "defenestrate.") In the end the young woman was able to escape with her hidden phone. I asked them if Fahrenheit 451 felt more real after living through a similar scenario. There was an overwhelming agreement that the sociodrama had helped make it more real. 

I hope there will be other opportunities to share my plays and workshops in public schools, so if you know of a teacher who might be open send him or her to www.RichDrama.com. 


A Clear Leading, one of the plays I've shared at Cindy's school, tells the story of Quaker abolitionist John Woolman, who spoke against slavery a century before our Civil War.
]]>Mon, 24 Apr 2017 16:41:00 -0400<![CDATA[Oriented Up (Fellowship and Abraham, Part 3)]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/oriented-up-fellowship-and-abraham-part
This morning our church, Westchester Chapel, closed out a three part series-within-a- series on Abraham, so I posted a sketch on the Abraham story I helped developed through sociodrama by at the Grace Brethren Church of Winona Lake, Indiana, in 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3qim6bJLbyA?rel=0

Here's today's service...
Rachel Taylor teaches on  Genesis 22. Dr. Linda Warren opens with a report on how much the Lord has been fulfilling His promises He gave when we went through our last sermon series, Moving into the Holy Spirit's Gifts. Pastor Jim Warren leads worship and reads  Psalm 141:1-2.

https://archive.org/embed/SRachelOrientedUpGenesis22050116

This service is available for download free on  iTunes, where you can also subscribe to our podcast. Search for "Westchester Chapel" on the iTunes Store.

If you want to more about starting a relationship with Jesus Christ visit www.WestchesterChapel.org/Salvation.

Photo of Rachel Taylor courtesy of NicolettiPhoto.com.

I play a lead in Providence, which could be heading to a city near you. Sign up at www.RichDrama.com/Updates to get the announcement.
]]>Sun, 01 May 2016 22:58:00 -0400<![CDATA[All in a day's work]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/all-in-days-work
Had a fabulous time performing a monologue from Hamlet, my 1-man piece based on Les Misérables, and sociodramas based on parallels the students observed. We talked a terrorist into dismantling his bomb, empowered someone to talk his friends through a rough situation, and helped someone avoid drugs. Not bad for a day's work, eh?
Find out more about sociodrama at  www.RichDrama.com/Workshops.

I play a lead in Providence, which could be heading to a city near you. Sign up at www.RichDrama.com/Updates to get the announcement.

Registration is now open for the Rocky Mountain Christian Filmmakers Camp.
]]>Fri, 15 Apr 2016 23:42:00 -0400<![CDATA[A sketch from scratch]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/a-sketch-from-scratch
Friday night I led a church drama team in a workshop in which we created a sketch from scratch through sociodrama. I guess the woman who runs their drama troupe was getting all these questions she couldn't answer like, "How long will it be?" "How much of the stage will you use?" "How many people will be in it?" We took the passage of scripture the pastor gave us, and through the structured improv of sociodrama we created a sketch that was so ideal to the sermon that when the sketch was over the pastor said, "Well, that was the sermon. You can all go home." He went on to preach a brilliant sermon, but he alluded to the sketch no less than five times through the course of the sermon. I was SO proud of them! Every single person contributed something to the script. They're all listed as playwrights.
]]>Tue, 30 Oct 2012 04:00:00 -0400<![CDATA[Sketch created through sociodrama]]>https://www.richdrama.com/blog/post/sketch-created-through-sociodrama
Sociodrama was used to create and direct this at the Applied Theatre Conference this weekend.



There were two endings created and rehearsed. The enactor playing Jeff was instructed to make his decision between the two endings in the moment of reflection of the "voices" he heard at the mirror.

Rights are granted to show this as a film and/or generate a script and perform it. If it is used for commercial purposes, please send 5% of any gross income to the Applied Theatre Center.
]]>Sun, 27 Mar 2011 01:11:00 -0400