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Drama and healing in Ancient

Greece: Demeter and Asklepios
a
Salvo Pitruzzella
a
Centro Artiterapie , Lecco, Italy
Published online: 21 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Salvo Pitruzzella (2011) Drama and healing in

Ancient Greece: Demeter and Asklepios, Dramatherapy, 33:2, 74-86, DOI:
10.1080/02630672.2011.582777

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02630672.2011.582777

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 Dramatherapy
Vol. 33, No. 2, July 2011, 74–86

Drama and healing in Ancient Greece: Demeter and Asklepios

Salvo Pitruzzella∗

Centro Artiterapie, Lecco, Italy

This article focuses on two important rituals of Ancient Greece, which are of
some interest for dramatherapists, as dramatic performances had a key role in
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them. We will examine them from a historical point of view, then explore their
mythic contents and how they were expressed in drama, trying to suggest cues
that relate them to present day dramatherapy theory and practice.
Keywords: ritual; healing drama; Ancient Greece

Introduction: searching for roots

Dramatherapy theory and practice are founded upon two basic assumptions
intimately connected one to another. They continue to be investigated as they
provide a solid cultural framework for using drama as a healing method.
The first idea is that human nature is inherently dramatic: this can be under-
stood in a broad sense, in that most human behaviour can be read through dramatic
metaphors,1 or else, in a simpler sense, maintaining that the dramatic dimension –
the possibility to move temporarily towards a parallel world, shared with a certain
number of our fellows – is a tool constantly at hand for human beings, accompa-
nying both our development as individuals, through children’s dramatic play, and
the whole history of our species, in the forms of ritual and theatre.2
The second idea is a corollary of the first: the fact that dramatic experience
is intrinsically connected with change and transformation. The alternative reality
experimented with in drama3 can influence the lives of people involved, and can
be addressed, either consciously or not, towards healing, problem-solving, a better
adjustment to the world, or even the search for a deeper meaning of existence.
Dramatherapy has developed these premises, creating practical ways, based
upon shared dramatic experience, to help people to overcome painful conditions
and recover their positive resources. Most studies have been focused on refining
therapeutic awareness and improving methods of intervention, interpretation, and
assessment.
However, there is also an ‘archaeological’ trend, aimed at tracing these
key ideas historically, especially in theatre history, but also in all the different

*Email: pitruzzellasalvo@gmail.com

ISSN 0263-0672 print/ISSN 2157-1430 online

© 2011 The British Association of Dramatherapists
DOI: 10.1080/02630672.2011.582777
http://www.informaworld.com
 Dramatherapy 75
phenomena, through which human dramatic nature has expressed itself. This
article explores two different ritual contexts in Ancient Greece, where drama had
a transformative function. They contain many interesting elements that can be
compared to contemporary dramatherapy theory and practice.

The gods of drama

Greek civilization is a fundamental stage in theatre history. There, the primary
structure of western theatre was conceived and codified; the very words ‘drama’
and ‘theatre’, used in almost all the European languages, are Greek. In Ancient
Greece, theatre existed as an autonomous entity, emerging out of religious rites, but
assuming a more conspicuous pedagogical and civil function. The written works
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that have survived are still performed in theatres all around the world, and they
gave rise to an endless number of variations, re-workings, and parodies. Just as
A.N. Whitehead said that all European philosophy ‘consists of a series of footnotes
to Plato’ (1929, p. 39), so arguably all European theatre descends from Thespis’
wagon.
Furthermore, we can find in the Greek world a widespread presence of drama
in different fields of human life. If classic theatre, as flourished in Pericles’ Athens,
is its artistic climax, many dramatic events occurred in rites and festivals all across
Greek culture, spanning from Mycenaean times to Late Hellenism, before and
after theatre’s golden age. We will consider particularly those connected with ini-
tiation and healing rites, which show outstanding analogies with dramatherapy, as
both make an intentional use of dramatic realities in order to foster change, health
improvement and an extended self-awareness.
The dramatic forms we are going to explore, even though there are not many
written documents about them, stand within precise ritual processes, devoted to
two mythic figures that had a profound influence upon Greek culture and spiritu-
ality. They may help us to reflect on the different ways in which drama can bring
change.
Our guides in this exploration will be Demeter, the mother-goddess, and
Asklepios, the deified hero of medicine. We will meet each of them in their own
special precincts: Eleusis and Epidaurus.

Eleusis
Every year, in the month of Boedromion (September–October), the Great
Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated. Although they were neither the only
Mysteries in Greece, nor even the oldest, the Mysteries held in Eleusis were con-
sidered the most important. In fifth-century Athens they became a mass event: the
whole city, including both men and women, old and young, freemen and slaves,
walked along the Holy Way, which started from the city graveyard and covered the
20 kilometres that separated Athens’ Acropolis from the Sanctuary of Eleusis. The
crowd accompanied those who were going to be initiated into the sacred Mysteries.
 76 S. Pitruzzella
The cult was still alive in Hellenistic and in Roman times, and even some
Emperors came as pilgrims from Rome to be initiated. Cicero, the noted Roman
orator, who had been initiated into the Mysteries in 78 BC, wrote of them 25 years
later, as a mature man, in these terms: ‘So we came to know the principles of life,
and we received the doctrine for a happy life, but also for a death supported by a
better hope’ (De legibus II 14,36).
Only the destruction of the Sanctuary in 396 AD by the Visigoths, led by King
Alaric, who imposed Christianity onto the last relics of Greek paganism, finally
ended a tradition that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
What were the Eleusinian Mysteries? Nowadays, the word ‘mystery’ makes
us think of something inexplicable, which sometimes we must just accept as it is,
but sometimes claims further inquiry. It has a particular meaning in the practices
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we are examining. Mysteries were religious rituals containing secret elements that
the participants were required not to tell anyone (sometimes, transgressors were
even sentenced to death). The root ‘mys’ means simply a closure, like closing the
eyes or a wound, hinting to the fact that one should ‘keep one’s mouth closed’
about these things: and so it was – even today we still do not know exactly what
happened in the crucial parts of the ritual.
‘Blessed among men on earth is the one who has seen these things. But he
who is foreign to the Mysteries, who does not participate, will never have a similar
fate, even after death, and in darkness he will disappear’ (Scarpi 2002, p. 45).
This is from the Hymn to Demeter, traditionally attributed to Homer, which is the
earliest document on the Eleusinian Mysteries, explaining how the goddess herself
established them, while wandering across the earth in search of her lost daughter.
Among the Greek deities, Demeter was the one who most retains in herself
the features of the Great Goddess, who had been worshiped for millennia in the
Mediterranean Area: lady of both natural and human cycles, mother of life and
dispenser of death (Campbell and Musés 1991). In the Olympic myth, Demeter
was the daughter of Chronos, Zeus’ sister and wife. She was mother of Kore, ‘the
daughter with the beautiful ankles’.
One day, while collecting flowers, Kore is kidnapped (with the complicity of
Zeus) by Hades, god of the underworld, who wants to make her his bride. The
desperate mother wanders around the earth for nine days and nine nights, with no
food or drink, by the light of burning torches, searching for her daughter. Then
she meets two characters: her sister Hecate, goddess of night and of ghosts (an
incarnation of another aspect of the Great Goddess), and Helios, the sun-god, who
beholds and knows everything. The former has heard the cries, and the latter has
seen the earth open and swallow the girl; he also reveals to the anguished mother a
treacherous agreement between the god of heaven and the god of the underworld.
Demeter’s grief turns into anger against Zeus, who has betrayed her, giving away
her beloved daughter against her will. The goddess flees from Mount Olympus,
towards the human world, and turns into an old woman. Still wandering in this
form, she finally arrives at Eleusis, and lies in despair along the road, near the
Maidens’ Well, where the city women used to go for water. A group of girls
 Dramatherapy 77
approaches: they are the daughters of Celeus, the king of Eleusis. They do not
recognize her as a goddess, and, pitying the old woman, invite her to follow them
to the palace, in order to take care of their brother Demophon, beloved son of the
king and of the queen Antisthenes. The goddess goes to court, but refuses to drink
the wine they offer her, asking instead for a cup of kikeion, a drink made of barley
and mint. She remains silent, covered with a black veil, sitting apart on a stool,
until an old servant, called Iambe, makes her laugh with salacious jokes. Demeter
then becomes nurse for the little prince, but she does not breastfeed him: instead
she blows on him, hugging him against her breast; then she sprinkles his body with
ambrosia, and puts him to sleep into the fireplace ‘just like an ember’. The child
grows up healthy like a young god, but the queen is suspicious, and one night she
bursts into the room where the unusual ritual takes place. Furious, Demeter reveals
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herself in all her power: a bright light sparkles from her body and the goddess tells
the miserable woman that the ritual she has interrupted would have made her son
immortal, and it is too late to repair. Then she demands the Eleusinian people to
erect a great temple, in which she will administer her wisdom, teaching humans
the sacred mysteries of life and death. The sanctuary is built in great haste. The
goddess returns to Eleusis, and there she remains, sitting afflicted on her throne,
lamenting her lost daughter. Because of her pain, the land dries up, and seeds cease
to germinate, causing a famine that threatens the destruction of the whole human
race. At this point, Zeus is compelled to intervene, and he sends a messenger, Iris
(the rainbow) to persuade Demeter to return among the gods, letting the vegetation
grow back, but her answer is that she will never set foot in Mount Olympus again,
if her beloved daughter is not returned to her. Zeus then sends Hermes (who was
accustomed to crossing the threshold between two worlds) to the underworld, in
order to visit Hades, to urge him to give back Kore to the mother. The god can-
not but consent, but before letting her go, he gives her a grain of pomegranate;
this means that she must return to Hades for a third of the year, remaining for
the rest of the time with her mother. ‘Every time the ground will cover itself with
fragrant flowers, in colourful spring, then you will rise from the dense darkness
again, a wonderful miracle for gods and mortal men’. Finally reunited with her
daughter, Demeter allows new vegetation to grow, except in that time of the year
when Kore, under the name of Persephone, will remain with Hades as the queen
of hell. But before returning pacified to Mount Olympus, the goddess goes once
again to Eleusis to teach the sacred Mysteries to the king and the people who had
built the temple in her honour.
Such is the story as recounted in the Homeric Hymn. We know from other
sources that the goddess also established the cultivation of wheat, and trained for
this purpose the eldest son of king Celeus, Tryptolemus (Eliade 1974, p. 319). Yet
the myth of Demeter/Kore is more than either an explanation of the origins of
agriculture, or the changing of seasons; it suggests deeper meanings, concerning
the ancestral awe of human beings confronting the frailty of life and the constant
and inescapable presence of death. This is one of the most recurrent themes in
all religious experiences, and the death-rebirth cycle of vegetation is just a further
 78 S. Pitruzzella
symbol. As Karoly Kerényi has written, ‘for the ancient religious people, it was
wheat that was a form expressing an unspeakable divine reality; not, contrariwise,
the great goddess being the metaphoric expression of wheat’ (Jung and Kerényi
1951, p. 172). The Mysteries raised in the initiated the awareness of this unspeak-
able reality, which helped them towards a ‘better hope’ beyond death. It is not a
promise of immortality, but a confident acceptance of our being part of a cosmic
cycle, which is eternal. This awakening happened through direct personal experi-
ence; and makes us think that the secret has been kept because the ritual proffered
an experience involving the body, senses, mind, and emotions; an event of which
we can conclude: it is impossible to explain, it must be experienced.
This profound experience was shaped using the sequence of the myth, of
which the whole Mysteries were essentially a performance. In it, the initiates
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played active roles, embodying the figures and facts of the story, directed by the
Hierophant (the one who reveals the sacred things).
That they were a sort of extended dramatization of the myth is suggested by
many particulars we know. First, the general structure: the Great Mysteries lasted
for nine days, like those passed by the goddess in search of her daughter. The
flower offerings at the beginning and at the end of the celebrations were a reminder
of the flowers that Kore was picking when she was abducted, as well as those
that the appeased mother made grow again on earth. Other aspects of the story
were performed in the public parts of the rite, like the obscene jokes uttered by
the servant Iambe, which made the goddess laugh (these were present in a more
striking way in the Thesmophorias, the so-called Small Mysteries, to which only
women were admitted). The initiated were compelled to abstain from eating (a
purification practice in many rituals); the fast was interrupted by taking the sacred
drink, the kikeion that the goddess preferred rather than wine.
On the fifth day, the ritual entered into the covert part: the public was driven
away, as people started to meet the goddess herself. First, initiates wandered
around the countryside in the night, armed with torches, shrieking out like des-
perate Demeter rambling around the earth. This was a powerful dramatic moment,
in which each of the initiates took the role of the goddess (Spiller 1997, p. 221).
We cannot tell exactly what happened next, but hints and fragments (Scarpi 2002,
pp. 104–219) suggest there were dances and chants, in which participants enacted
the main elements of the myth, experimenting with Hecate’s night and Helios’ sun-
light, the descent into darkness (Persephone’s fall in the kingdom of Hades), the
shining epiphany of the goddess, the resurrection of Kore and the reunion with
the mother. Ritual phrases were pronounced, and the sacred objects of the goddess
were shown to the participants, and ritually used.
Over the years, many studies have been done to understand the nature of such
an intense experience, which changed radically the world of the initiates. Some
argue that the cause was a chemical alteration of mind, due to the presence of
some natural hallucinogenic substance in the ritual drink (Gordon Wasson et al.
1978). However, from my own experience of the power of the dramatic process, I
am inclined to believe that the prodigious efficacy of the Mysteries is connected
 Dramatherapy 79
with their specifically dramatic quality. When people are fully engaged in dramatic
reality, they have an experience, involving their whole self, even though the events
they share are fictional.
This is evident from a dramatherapy session, which I ran with a mixed group
of clients and members of staff in the Mental Health Care Day Centre where I have
worked for many years. Starting from the character of a painter, chosen by one of
the clients, the group had devised a scene set in an art gallery, where the protago-
nist had her first one-woman exhibition. Afterwards, I asked people to create a new
scene, in which everybody was an artist, exhibiting his/her own picture, being at
the same time witness of the others’ work. Among them, a young social worker,
newcomer in the group, who appeared to enjoy the performance very much, lis-
tening carefully to all the descriptions of the imaginary paintings, and intervening
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with lively questions and comments. A few days later, in a staff supervision, she
started saying: ‘I wonder whether I became psychotic too! While staring at the
blank walls, I really saw the pictures, in every detail, as if they were there, in front
of me’. The power of imagination is enhanced by the shared affective climate,
making the dramatic experience as deep and meaningful as a real one.
In the Mysteries, entering dramatic reality had an enlivening power. The par-
ticipants were at the same time actors and audience; the vicissitudes of the myth
were both relived from within, and beheld from outside. People could receive their
intimate message: the confirmation of something their mind already knew, but only
in the shared dramatic moment it became evident, and was engraved in a deep and
lasting way in their souls.

Epidaurus
The invention of medicine as a science is ascribed to Greek civilization. Although
other peoples from the Mediterranean area had developed sophisticated pharma-
cologies and surgical techniques, Hippocrates of Kos, who lived between the V
and the IV Century BC, first formulated the idea that the origins of illness are to
be found in the person, rather than in supernatural influences. Five centuries later,
Galen of Pergamum improved his techniques, and introduced many experimental
methods.4
The two most prominent physicians of antiquity both came from cities where
two important sanctuaries devoted to Asklepios were erected; and both started their
training in such a circle: Hippocrates was instructed by his father, a member of the
Asklepios brotherhood, and Galen was himself a therapon (Asklepios’ priest).
Such a coincidence suggests that there was no contradiction between sacred
and scientific medicine; rather they were complementary. There are other details
confirming it: the facts, for example, that during the celebrations of Asklepios
priests also gave medicines to patients who asked the god for healing, and that
many renowned Greek physicians were devotees of Asklepios.
There are several different stories about Askelpios. Some legends recount that
he was originally an historical figure, a great healer who lived in the times of
 80 S. Pitruzzella
the Trojan War: Homer mentions two of his sons, Podalirios and Macaon, as
doctors following the Achaean troops (Kerényi 1963, p. 512). But at least two
other different myths present him as a demigod, son of Apollo and a mortal
maiden.
According to the first myth, probably the oldest one, Apollo had seduced
Coronis, young daughter of Flegias, king of Thessaly. But when the god left,
she gave way to the enticement of a gallant shepherd, even though she carried
inside the semen of her divine lover. Apollo heard of her infidelity from a raven;
he cursed the bird, whose feathers were formerly white, making it black forever.
Then he asked his sister Artemis to punish the treacherous maiden. The goddess
killed Coronis with an arrow, but when the body was put on the top of a stake
to be burned, Apollo felt compassion for the baby, and snatched him, still alive,
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from the mother’s womb, then entrusted him to Chiron, the centaur who had been
Hercules’ mentor. From the centaur, young Asklepios learnt the first rudiments of
the medical art (Graves 1955, pp. 155–156).
However, the myth told in Epidaurus was slightly different (Kerényi 1963,
pp. 128–129). Coronis, daughter of the warlike king of Thessaly, came to
Epidaurus with her father’s retinue. The king intended to wage war against the
city, and looked for information about the local army. But Coronis, unknown to
her father, was pregnant with Apollo’s son. She went to a holy place, and gave
birth to a baby, who was abandoned on mount Tition, famous for its healing herbs.
Asklepios grew up there, nursed by a goat and protected by a shepherd’s dog, who
had both escaped from a herd. When the owner of the animals, who had climbed
the mountain looking for them, tried to get near, a dazzling light stopped him, and
he realized that the baby was a divine offspring. Since then, no goat was sacrificed
to Asklepios, and the dog became one of his main symbols. The other important
sacred animal was the serpent (it is worth noting that snakes are symbols of healing
in many cultures, for their ability to live both under and over ground, and to renew
themselves by changing their skin. Furthermore, many remedies were extracted
from snake’s venom). Many snakes were bred in the sanctuaries, and when the cult
moved to Rome, a snake taken from Epidaurus pointed the place where the temple
had to be erected.
Thus, Asklepios learnt the healer’s trade from his father Apollo and from his
mentor Chiron. Apollo was a healer himself, but also a ruthless death giver, while
Asklepios was a meek physician. It is recounted that he received from Athena a
drop of the Gorgon’s blood, so powerful that he could raise the dead. This made
Zeus furious, as he could not tolerate such a challenge to his omnipotence, and
killed Asklepios with a thunderbolt. In revenge, Apollo slaughtered the Cyclops,
makers of the deadly weapons for the king of the gods. Eventually, Asklepios was
revived, and his image holding the healing serpent5 was put in the firmament.
After his resurrection, Asklepios did not ascend mount Olympus to stay with
the other gods, but spent his life among the mortals, as a wandering doctor. He
had a family, and is often portrayed encircled by his sons and daughters; the most
famed of them was Hygieia, who had her own personal cult.
 Dramatherapy 81
From VI Century BC, the sanctuary of Epidaurus became a renowned healing
place. So many ill people came from all over the Greece that extensions of the
sacred building were necessary, and also the construction of guest quarters for the
patients’ relatives. Other sanctuaries, called Asklepieia, were established across
the whole of Greek influence: besides the already mentioned Pergamum and Kos,
Corinth, Dion, Messene, and Lebena were prominent.
The act of incubation (en-koimaomai) was the core of the healing process in
the Asklepieia. Patients spent their nights in the temple, in a special edifice called
abaton. The god manifested himself in dreams, suggesting appropriate therapies,
or even laying his hands on the patient’s head. Sometimes he appeared in the shape
of a dog, or a serpent, licking the ill part of the body, and healing it with his divine
tongue. The oneiric apparitions of Asklepios are documented in the many votive
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tablets, called iamata, that healed patients left on the sacred ground.
Epidaurus is famous also for its magnificent theatre (still used nowadays), but
it is noteworthy that in almost all the sites devoted to the god-healer other, smaller,
theatrical spaces were present. While the familiar classic theatre (theatron) was
open to the air, these performance spaces within the sacred enclosures were roofed
buildings called odeia (sing. odeion).
Although the Odeion of Periclean Athens was generally used for the perfor-
mance of poetic odes or choric recitals, the precinct odeia could well have been
used to stage plays. One could assume these performances were to amuse the
patients and their relatives during their sojourn, but not actually connected with
the healing process. However, such a function looks rather unlikely, as it is inspired
by a more modern perspective, which sees theatre as a mere entertainment. K.V.
Hartigan’s significant study convincingly rejects the suggestion, maintaining that
the performances were an integral part of the ritual-therapeutic process. In them,
the priests, helped by a choir composed of members of Asklepios’ fellowship, sang
prayers and hymns, sometimes written by former patients; then they performed the
stories of the god and of his miraculous achievements:

The patients gathered in the public viewing space to watch a pageant performed in
the sacred circle before them. The time in the theatre would not be long, for the
patients were weak, in pain, and eager to retire to their sleep in the abaton. These
mini-dramas at the Askepieia were not the long plays performed for Dionysus each
spring in Athens. Not only would the length of the scripts of Athenian dramatists
preclude their production at the Asklepieia, but also their plots were also unsuit-
able. For although the Athenian plays are based on familiar Myths, patients about to
entrust their very lives to healing ministrations – even if from a god – do not want
or need to see enacted the tragic fate of Agamemnon or Oedipus. Comedy would
be more beneficial, for, as numerous modern studies show, laughter brings many
positive effects, but nevertheless a full Aristophanic drama would run far too long.
The Asklepieion pageants were composed to be short, symbolic, and suggestive.
(Hartigan 2009, pp. 29–30)

We may presume that the smaller dimensions and the covering provided a more
intimate setting, where individual concerns could be addressed, while tragedy, as
 82 S. Pitruzzella
performed in the theatron, usually dealt with public issues. Although their tone
was light, inducing laughter rather than tears, performances were far from being
disrespectful. Attending them, patients got ready to welcome the dreams, through
which the god manifested himself, always in a benevolent way, sometimes with a
remarkable sense of humour. Probably, many authors were former patients, who
had experienced the process, and knew how to compound awe for the deity and
respect for the sufferers who, just like they did before, came there to ask for the
god’s help, with cheerfulness and optimism that improve hope. And hope has had
a fundamental function in the healing process.
In dramatherapy, the role of audience is a significant one (see, among others,
Jones 1996, Pitruzzella 2009). During the group process, there are many times
when people are called to witness their fellow participant’s performances. The
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audience supports the efforts of the performers, as a deep feeling of sharing and
understanding flows across the threshold of dramatic reality. At the same time, the
performance itself deeply affects the audience, as both its contents and forms are
born within a shared journey, in which people’s mutual mirroring helps them to see
and encounter themselves. Within such an empathetic circle, the act of witnessing
the other is a regenerative experience.

Drama and transformation

Reflecting upon the two mythic narratives, whose protagonists patronized the dif-
ferent dramatic rituals we have examined, we may notice a certain substantial
affinity. With variations, they are built around one theme, which is a central issue in
every religion, and an inescapable stumbling block in any research about the mean-
ing of the ephemeral human condition: the binomial life/death; their essential,
though unfathomable, interdependence.
In the myth of Demeter, the mother’s too human pain is transcended in a con-
ception of natural cycles, in which the decay of all that lives is the necessary
condition for life itself to be renewed. In Asklepios’ myth, death is the ultimate
boundary for the healer, who, notwithstanding the power of his arts, must submit
to it; at the same time, the murdered healer is born again as a god, continuing
for eternity his care for his human brothers and sisters (this similarity between
Asklepios and Jesus made the former particularly loathed by the Christians).
However, these narratives, like most of the ancient myths, suggest an element
of mediation between opposites, a point of transcendence of two conditions that
in everyday life are mutually exclusive, though being basically complementary.6
The mediating element is the concept of transformation. From a philosophical
viewpoint, it had already appeared at the very beginning of Greek thought, and
is highlighted in the contrast between the position of Parmenides, who sanctioned
the irretrievable dichotomy of Being and Not-Being and that of Empedocles, who
identifies the first principle in the mutability and flowing of everything (Colli 1975,
pp. 87–93). Conversely, in the language of myth, which does not aspire to the
 Dramatherapy 83
precise clarity of philosophy, the painful conflict between life and death coexists
with the awareness that everything must change.
Such a concept offers an interesting standpoint in considering the dramatic
forms we have examined; and helps us recognize some enlightening aspects of
the different ways dramatic experience works. Indeed, both of them propose to
the participants a process of transformation, although with different shades, at two
levels: spiritual and therapeutic.
We have seen how in the Eleusinian Mysteries a symbolic journey allows the
initiates to be reconciled with death’s ineluctability, through the experience of
feeling part of a whole great cycle, which is perpetually renewed.
Yet the prelude to such a renewal, and perhaps the price for it, is the falling
into chaos: the wound of parting opens again, and the affliction of not knowing, is
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enacted in the pilgrimage of the distressed goddess. Liberation from the illusory
chains of mortality occurs through the dramatic emphasis on the feelings with
which they are interwoven: the pain of the mother for the lost girl represents, on
the one hand, our attachment to life and our fear of losing it; on the other hand,
our resistance to the changes that life itself imposes on us. In taking the roles of
the goddess and of her emanation, Kore, people experienced the painful journey
of loss and deceit, but participated also in her apotheosis in the cosmic symbol of
natural cycles. Liberation is neither the achievement of immortality, nor a passive
resignation to an inescapable doom, but rather a quiet acceptance, which puts our
griefs and preoccupations into a different perspective.
Sharing had a great value in the ritual: the Mysteries were not individual ini-
tiation; indeed, a whole community was included. Dramatic experience, in those
parts of the process where embodiment was most stimulated, was always a group
experience. And the spiritual integration that followed was an accomplishment
that led not towards a withdrawal from the world, but yet towards a return to
everyday reality, with an enlarged awareness that restores and perfects the art of
living.
In their use of drama, the Mysteries largely followed the basic structure of dra-
matic ritual: a detachment from everyday reality, a mythical narrative performed in
a sacred space with the participation of all the attendees. There are moments when
each member of the community is called in the first person to embody elements
of the story, and moments when the officiants hold the narrative thread, handling
sacred symbols, with which the whole community identifies itself. There is no
clear distinction between actors and audience, and officiants often take the role of
group facilitators.
The context of Asklepios’ rituals is quite different. Here, the participants do
not bring an existential question, but rather a precise pain of the body, but also of
the soul. They ask the god for a transformation of their pathological condition into
a restored wellbeing. However, in order to accomplish this goal, neither hygienic
rules nor the administration of medicines are enough: patients’ active collaboration
is necessary to induce the god to appear. The god manifests himself in dreams, but
 84 S. Pitruzzella
dreams are created by the dreamers, who need to purify and prepare themselves:
they must ‘incubate’ their own dreams.
The dramatic presentations that were held in the odeia (or, sometimes, in the
open spaces within the temenos), probably had a double purpose.
On the one hand, they alleviated patients’ moods, introducing elements of
humour and light-heartedness; on the other hand, performing images of the god
and his helpers, prepared the audience for the oneiric epiphany that was the core
of the healing ritual.

Conclusions
I hope that this brief exploration fosters an awareness in dramatherapists that we
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have worthy and inspiring ancestors. Many traces of Dramatherapy’s key ideas,
which are expounded in the Introduction, can be recognized in the Ancient Greek
dramatic rituals. I hope readers may find ways to compare and connect them with
their own ideas about what Dramatherapy is and how it works. I will conclude with
some reflections derived from my own experience.
The first is from a very practical point of view, concerning the different ways
of applying drama as a transformation tool. It can work on both sides of the per-
formance: from the perspective of the actors, and from the perspective of the
audience. In the first way, people perform a shared story, living it from within
by playing all the roles; in the second, they witness a performance that acts deeply
on them. In the dramatherapy process, clients take in turn the roles of actors and
spectators, and I believe that this continuous switch-over enhances not only their
role flexibility, but also their empathic competences.
The second consideration is about using myths in Dramatherapy practice. I
have run many workshops on Demeter. I realize that they are not ‘proper’ ritual
events, as a shared religious belief is missing; nonetheless, myths have a double
face, pointing to both the supernatural and the human worlds. At the latter level,
they display life’s conflicts, challenges and thresholds, in which people can identify
themselves. Acting the myth allows people to experience the feelings connected
with such issues, and share them with the others, while the narrative establishes
a safe distance for the actors, providing at the same time a larger symbolic frame
where new meanings can emerge.
Although the workshops explored the whole myth, people’s main focus was
usually on the relationship between Demeter and Kore, and especially on the two
moments of the mother’s grief and of the reunion with the daughter. Many of
the participants projected on the aggrieved Demeter their own losses, as well as
their fears and preoccupations, and a certain sense of dismay hovered in the air.
Nonetheless, the simple fact of sharing it with other people in the dramatic fiction,
engenders some tentative hope, which grows as the story goes along, and culmi-
nates in the scene of mother and daughter hugging, with each person playing in
turn the two roles. From these two embraces, which belong at the same time to
the world of the mythic characters, and to the actual world of the group, expressed
 Dramatherapy 85
by the real warmth of real bodies, people distil a feeling of being-with, able to
help them to endure woes and overcome the sense of inadequacy they may feel in
facing them.
Yet, in order to accomplish such a momentous transition, they have to go
through a series of dramatic enactments, which are imbued with cathartic feelings:
anger and despair on one side, and the abrupt explosion of laughter on the other.
This journey mirrors the life cycle and its changes; at the end, people come out
refreshed and vivified.
To conclude, I believe that these ancient dramatic rituals have still much to
teach us, and we must regard them with awe and respect, but at the same time giv-
ing ourselves the permission to explore them with the eyes of twenty-first century
people, drawing on our creativity and insight.
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Notes
1. See, for example, Landy (1995) where it is epitomized in an explicit statement: ‘In
everyday life, as in drama/theatre, persons or actors take on and play out personae or
roles in order to express a sense of who they are and what they want’ (p. 7).
2. The notion that human nature is inherently dramatic can be found throughout Sue
Jennings’ work (see in particular Jennings 2011).
3. This is called ‘dramatic reality’ (see, among others, Jenkyns 1996, Jones 1996,
Duggan and Grainger 1997, Jennings 1998, Pendzik 2006).
4. Including vivisection, which led him to the first glaring blunder in the history of
medicine by comparing human circulatory system with pigs.
5. It is rather curious that the caduceus (the stick with two serpents entwined), which is
still today the symbol of medicine, is not the one attributed to Askepios, which has
only one serpent, but is similar to the stick used by Hermes, the god who leads the
dead to afterlife.
6. The notion of myth as a mediation between opposites can be found everywhere in
mythical studies, from Levi-Strauss to Eliade. For a thorough synthesis, see Jesi 1973.

Notes on contributor
Salvo Pitruzzella is a dramatherapist, psychodramatist, and creative drama teacher from
Palermo, Italy. He works as a dramatherapist with adolescents and adults in mental health
care units. Since 1998, he has been Dramatherapy course leader at the Arts Therapies Centre
(www.artiterapie.it), Lecco, the major institute of its kind in Northern Italy.
He teaches Dramatherapy in Arts Therapies Master courses at Rome and Palermo
Universities, and runs workshops all around Italy.
He is an International Member of BADTh (British Association of Dramatherapy), and
Honorary Member of SPID (Società Professionale Italiana Drammaterapia).
He is the author of various books, including Introduction to Dramatherapy: Person and
Threshold, published in England in 2004 by Routledge.
He also wrote a novel, L’ultima vendemmia, Edizioni Creativa, 2010, and edited the first
unabridged Italian version of William Blake’s The Four Zoas, issued in 2007, the 250th
anniversary of the poet’s birth.
His current interests are the use of performance in therapeutic processes, and exchange
among the Arts Therapies.
 86 S. Pitruzzella
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