For a long time, I was part of a theatre group for autistic people.  I joined when I was 13 and I remained part of the group in some capacity or other for a total of ten years (although for the final year I was only irregularly attending meetings as a substitute instructor).  I suppose it’s fairly obvious I wouldn’t have stayed for such a long period – indeed, from the beginning of my teenage years until I was finishing up my BA – unless I found it valuable!

I’ve spent some time thinking about why I found it valuable, and here are some of my answers:

1. Theatre is fun. Not everything in autistic people’s lives needs to be a formal intervention.  I cannot help but fear that many autistic children learn, through an endless parade of interventions, all quite openly premised on the idea that we have deficits that need to be corrected, that there is something wrong with us.  The instructors of the theatre program I attended were drama professionals, and they always resisted using the language of intervention.  While part of me sometimes wonders if organizing the program as a formal intervention would have made it more effective at social teaching, the larger part can’t help but appreciate how the lack of any intervention language made it a more enjoyable and comfortable experience for everyone.  If the program had been about correcting my deficits, I doubt I’d have remained as long as I did.
2. Theatre can be a basis for community. Of course, in my case, the group I was attending was a primarily specialized group for autistic people.  This was also true of a role-playing community discussed by Fein (2015).  I imagine that the degree to which communities of typically-developing actors will accept autistic members will depend a lot on the individuals concerned.
3. Theatre allows for social learning without the confines of identity. I think this is an interesting point, and one that may not be particularly obvious.  People – including autistic people – have identities that we try to present to the world.  These identities are very limiting.  Only a narrow range of social behaviours are consistent with our identities.  Social role-playing and practice in the context of a social skills intervention may have the advantage of directly targeting specific skills, but individuals still participate in these activities as themselves, limiting the range of social expression available to them.  In a theatre program, individuals can throw off these limiting identities and free themselves to explore the full range of social behaviour, including the vast parts of that range that they would never have approached otherwise.  These explorations are a valuable form of social learning, and I’m not sure what other context would allow us to undertake them.
4. Theatre can reduce social anxiety. I can hardly overstate how anxious I was when I first joined the theatre program at age 13.  I didn’t have a formal diagnosis of anxiety, but this was more due to a failure of the system rather than any lack of anxiety on my part.  I wouldn’t even have felt secure enough to attend the group if the instructors had not first visited my house and met me in that safe environment.  Even after joining, I still sat out of many of the activities for the first year or so.  However, I gradually participated more and more and became more and more confident doing so.  While I’ve written elsewhere that it was my flight from the mainstream that was really decisive in getting rid of my anxieties, I have no doubt that drama contributed as well.  Indeed, I think that the simple boost in confidence that comes from acting in front of an audience is not the only way in which theatre reduces anxiety.  Anxieties can (strange as it sounds) become part of someone’s identity.  As I described earlier, theatre can help us throw off the chains of our identities, and the exploration of a non-anxious personality can help our real identity become less anxious in turn.
5. Theatre can help us “think on our feet” in social situations. A good theatre program will have lots of interesting improv activities, which force us to make split-second decisions.  Many autistic people struggle with these rapid decisions in social interactions – we need more time to process new social information and select our responses than is afforded by a world where pauses of even two or three seconds are unacceptable.  Of course, we can be simply unable to respond in the absurdly rapid time-frames demanded by society, but part of our inability to reply swiftly can sometimes reflect anxiety rather than slow social processing per se.  Lots of improv practice can make us more confident about making the split-second decisions required in everyday social settings.
6. Theatre can make one a better public speaker. I think this one probably doesn’t need much elaboration.  Due in large part to my theatre experiences, I can project my voice and speak confidently in front of an audience.
7. Theatre can give people an opportunity to express themselves. Fein (2015) discusses how autistic children and youth in a summer role-playing camp were able to invent characters and narratives and express themselves through these inventions.  Many autistic people are extraordinarily creative.  Creating cultural works, either individually or together as an autistic community, also empowers us and gives us a voice.  This benefit is particularly obvious when the autistic actor can deliver a performance in front of a community audience.

Of course, not all autistic people will enjoy or benefit from any given theatre program.  The suitability of a program will depend on the characteristics of the autistic person and the culture and characteristics of the program.  Some autistic people will not enjoy theatre at all!

Furthermore, I feel compelled to give due warning that one should not expect to observe all of these benefits overnight.  In the absence of a formal intervention structure, theatre is a subtle thing, capable of delivering great benefits, but over time.  This contrasts somewhat with an explicit program of social instruction that might (or might not) provide concrete and immediately-useful teaching.  Remember, I was in my theatre program for a decade.  It took years of weekly sessions before the benefits I listed above became apparent.

However, these disclaimers aside, I do believe that theatre is an under-appreciated intervention, and simply a fun activity, for many autistic people.  In particular, the chance to explore social behaviours and actions without the constraint of our own identities, to explore other identities and characters radically different from ourselves, is a rare but valuable opportunity.

 

I’m interested in your thoughts!  Please feel free to comment.  Critical comments welcome (as long as we refrain from personal attacks).

References

Fein, E. (2015). Making meaningful worlds: Role-playing subcultures and the autism spectrum. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 39(2), 299–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-015-9443-x