Practitioner Training
THE WORK CHANGES WHEN YOU ENTER THE ROOM.
You can know the exercise. Understand the methodology. Read the theory. Prepare the session.
And then the room responds.
Someone resists. A story changes the direction of the conversation. An exercise lands differently than expected. Something important emerges that was not in the plan.
At First Drop Theatre, our practitioner training programmes create spaces to learn methodologies, experience them from within and explore what it means to use them in your own practice.
Experience the Work Before You Use the Work
We believe methodologies are understood differently when they are experienced.
So our training spaces are participative.
You may improvise. Tell a story. Create an image. Enter a scene. Watch an experience unfold. Reflect on what happened. Try something again.
And then we look beneath the experience.
What was the facilitator doing? Why might this exercise have been used here? What shifted in the room? What choices were made? What else could have happened?
Playback Theatre
Playback Theatre is an improvisational theatre form in which performers listen to stories shared by people and bring them to life on the spot.
Our practitioner training explores the art and practice of Playback Theatre - developing the ability to listen deeply, respond spontaneously, and translate lived experiences into movement, sound, images and scenes.
Through experiential work, participants explore the interplay between storytelling, improvisation, ensemble, performance and the relationship between the teller, the performers and the audience. They also examine the choices, sensitivities and responsibilities involved in bringing another person's story to life.
The emphasis is not simply on performing stories. It is on learning to listen, make creative choices and hold another person's experience with care.
Psychodrama
Psychodrama works with action, relationship, roles and the worlds people carry within them.
Our Psychodrama training is led by Dr. Radhika Jain - Certified Psychodrama Director, Accredited Playback Theatre Trainer and Expressive Arts Therapy Practitioner. She is also Co-Founder of First Drop Theatre.
Through experiential training, participants encounter Psychodrama concepts and methods by engaging with the work rather than only studying it from a distance. They experience the process, reflect on what unfolds and explore the thinking and practice that sit beneath the methodology.
The scope and depth of each programme are made clear to participants before they begin.
Expressive Arts
Not every experience begins with words.
Expressive Arts creates possibilities to explore through image, movement, sound, story, writing and other forms of creative expression.
Our training spaces invite participants to experience arts-based processes, reflect on what happens within them and consider how such approaches may inform their own work with people and groups.
The emphasis is on process, presence and exploration - not artistic skill.
Facilitation & Working With Groups
We explore the choices practitioners make while working with groups - how we frame an experience, give an instruction, notice what is happening, hold reflection, respond to resistance and decide when to stay with a plan and when to adapt.
Who Are These Trainings For?
Our training programmes are designed for people whose work brings them into rooms where human dynamics matter.
HR and L&D professionals. Educators. Healthcare professionals. Facilitators. Community practitioners. Theatre practitioners. People working with groups, stories, learning and change.
What matters is curiosity about the work and a willingness to participate in it.
How We Work
Our training programmes vary in depth, duration and focus.
Some are introductions to a methodology. Some explore a particular approach or area of practice. Others create opportunities for sustained experiential learning and practitioner development.
Depending on the programme, participants may experience methods, practise elements of the work, observe facilitation, reflect together and examine how learning might travel into their own contexts.
We are careful about the scope of each training and what it does - and does not - prepare someone to do.
From Tool to Practice
When should I use this? Why this exercise and not another? What am I noticing in the group? Whose voice is missing? What do I do with what has emerged? Am I using the methodology because the room needs it - or because I know it?
Our practitioner training spaces make room for these questions.
We are interested not only in helping people learn methods, but in developing the attention, reflection and judgement with which those methods are used.
Because the tool is only part of the practice.
Come Learn With Us
If you work with people, groups, stories or learning - and want to explore what Applied Theatre, Psychodrama, Expressive Arts and related approaches might bring to your practice - we'd love to have you in the room.