Investigating the Therapeutic Benefits of Improvisational Animation
Investigating the Therapeutic Benefits of Improvisational Animation
Abstract
In this paper, I will explore the therapeutic benefits of applying improvisation into the field of animation. Investigating the leading theories of spontaneity and considering a number of benefits of improvisation, including playfulness, freedom, fluidity, surprise, thrill, risk, and the immediate connection with an audience, I will underscore that improvisational art appreciates incompleteness and imperfectness and prefers adequacy to brilliance. In this respect, I will focus on therapeutic benefits of improvisational art such as removing anxiety, creating a space to relate to others, and the growth of self-confidence and self-esteem in a social milieu, most of them developed by Moreno, the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy. By adapting Moreno’s ideas about the spontaneity theatre and exploring the therapeutic influence of improvisation on both the artist and the audience, I will argue that while an improviser is her/his first interlocutor, her/his creation has the potential of creating the space for communication. Furthermore, I will discuss why animation is considered the last imaginable art medium to be created improvisationally; improvisational animation in the context of artist-audience interrelationship has not been explored with therapeutic and healing objectives, but there exist a huge potential if both animation and psychology become more hospitable to phenomenological approaches. In this respect, I will explain how improvisational animation might own/offer benefits based on its medium specificity, plus the limitations or barriers which might exist in the field. The importance of doing such study is to create a space to think about improvisational animation as an alternative approach to diversity, which could help us make a balance in the world where we tend to make everything extremely pre-planned, controlled, and over-perfect.
Keywords: Animation, Improvisation, Spontaneity Theatre, Therapy, Moreno.