Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Moreno stage and Boughton Place seeking donations

Do you remember the first time you stood on the legendary Moreno Stage?

Maybe you were at Beacon Hospital when J.L. Moreno and Zerka Moreno taught psychodrama to students flocking  from throughout the United States and around the world to the small town of Beacon, N.Y. Maybe you first stepped on the stage after it was dismantled and reconstructed at Boughton Place, a retreat center in Highland, N.Y., where Zerka Moreno continued to teach until the  late 1990s. Or maybe you've taken part as an actor with Playback Theatre or...

Boughton Place preserves and maintains the original psychodrama stage built by J.L. Moreno in 1936, minus the first tier that was too wide to fit into the space. The stage is recognized as a vital symbol of the world wide psychodrama community, and thousands of psychodrama participants -- including me -- have attended events there since 1986.

Boughton Place houses Hudson Valley Psychodrama Institute run by nationally known psychodramatists Rebecca Walters and Judy Swallow and has been used as a residential training center by Zerka Moreno, Jonathan Fox, Ann Hale, Dorothy and Mort Satten, Donna Little, Natalie Winters, Louise Lipman, Nan Nally-Seif, Connie Miller, Kate Hudgins and Susan Aaron. A non-profit organization, it has become an international training center for psychodramatists from around the world.

The board is now seeking financial donations to help with upkeep, repair, renovation and landscaping of the three-acre center. For more information about Boughton Place and how to make a donation, see this link.