Psychodrama-related projects with the involvement of DEA Institute staff:
2001-2005 Art for Social Change – Play Against Violence (a project of The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate) – Malen Malenov, Zlatko Teoharov, Svetozar Dimitrov, Petar Tsikalov
This Soros Centre for the Arts, European Cultural Foundation and European Commission-funded project aimed at providing children from disadvantaged groups (homeless, living in institutions, victims of violence) with developmental support and opportunity for self-expression based on the principles of Psychodrama and creative therapies. Group training and supervision for the teams (a total of 60 people from all over Bulgaria) has been entirely conducted by the means of sociodrama and sociometry.
2003 Act !N Play – the first Bulgarian website for Psychodrama and Action Methods
This website, the first of its kind in Bulgarian, has been created and developed for well over a decade by Malen Malenov (currently archived on DEA’s website under „Archive“). It features events calendar from the world of Psychodrama, ad-hoc interviews with world-renown Psychodramatist such as Marcia Karp, David Kipper, Adam Blatner, Chris Farmer, Jose Fonseca and others, articles by Peter Felix Kellermann, discussion groups such as “Drama therapy and Psychodrama” etc.
2007-2009 Establishing “Play What’s Happening” – a playback theatre company at the New Bulgarian Universty Theatre department – Malen Malenov
The project was supported by the Board of Trustees of New Bulgarian University. It provided acting students with introductory training in Playback Theatre and Sociodrama. An experimental 14-member company has been founded that performed and toured on regular basis for 2 years.
2010 School Mediation – A Path to Peaceful Resolution of Conflicts within the School Community – Boryana Chalakova
This Varna Municipality funded project was entirely based on the practical and philosophical principles of sociodrama and aimed at providing both pupils and educators with better understanding and experience in perspective taking, role-play and role-reversal for the purpose of conflict-resolution. It included a series of training for adolescents and for school-counsellors as well as dissemination of information. The results and the conceptual milestones of the project have been published in a booklet.
2012 Establishing the annual Psychodrama Festival in Plovdiv – Inna Braneva, Konstantin Banderov
From its beginning, this event attracted substantial interest and for the first 4 years of its existence it has been the only ongoing national Psychodrama convention. It aims at dissemination of Psychodrama ideas and its points intersection with other modalities such as community arts, other expressive therapies, Playback and Forum Theatre, other forms of psychotherapy. Since 2012 every year it gathers between 100 and 220 participants from Bulgaria and from abroad. Psychodramatists and related professionals from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Sweden and other countries have conducted a total of 105 psychodramatic workshops in the Main program and additional 55 workshops in the auxiliary program.
2012-2013 Project Violet – Let the violence go – VIOLET / projectviolet.eu – Inna Braneva
This European Commission DAPHNE III funded project was aimed at children and adolescents with sensorial deficits aged between 10 and 19 from Bulgaria and the UK. As part of the project a specialized psychodrama-training for prevention of school bullying and aggression has been carried out.
2012-2013 Bulgarian Ministry of Education – Fostering Integrative Education programme; Association of Parents of Children with Auditory Impairments / Working in Class through the methods of Group Training, Teambuilding, informal leadership – Inna Braneva
The methodology provides for discussion and role-playing focused on group cohesion, informal leadership, etc. The design is based on the principles of Psychodrama.
2013 – ongoing Bulgarian Ministry of Education – Fostering Integrative Education programme – Inna Braneva
Designing a comprehensive methodology for supporting the psycho-emotional and social development of children at risk between 3 and 7 years of age. A total of 20 sessions are carried out for each age-group based on the principles of Psychodrama and Relational Psychomotorics. The methodology provides for training and supervision of educators and other child-care professionals.
PUBLICATIONS
- Inna Braneva, Theodora Milotinova (2013) Violet: Prevention of bulling and aggression in schools: Manual for Psychodrama Training with Children and Youths /8-18 years/ at schools, 2013, Sofia, Bulgaria;
- Gueorgui Damyanov, Inna Braneva (2016) The Psychodrama Method in Bulgaria – History, Therapeutic approach, Application, Bulgarian Society of Psychotherapists, 2016, Sofia, Bulgaria.
- Blatner, Adam (2014) Acting-In: Practical Applications of Psychodramatic Methods. Bulgarian translation, Centaur Art Publishing / DEA Psychodrama Institute
- Dimitrov, S (2008) Therapeutic aspects of the Psychodrama method in working with groups of people second generation bearing traumatism as a result of repressions and torture In: Collection of scientific reports from the 5th National Congress on Psychology 31.10.-02.11.2008
- Dimitrov, S. (2005) The Drama of Psychosis. Group-dynamic work with Schizophrenic patients. Theory of institutional therapy. Clinical and theoretical models of the application of psychodrama in the work with psychotic patients. In: “Applied Psychology in Bulgaria – opportunities and perspectives” Varna, May 20-22; 2005