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| Photo with Clint and chair, borrowed from CBS News site. |
Actor Clint Eastwood tried out the "empty chair" technique last night at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., talking to an invisible Barack Obama.
His drama was self directed -- we in psychodrama call that a monodrama -- and everyone from The Huffington Post to The Washington Post is talking about it this morning. Rachel Maddow called it weird, and a few others thought it was a joke. Obama got into the act by Tweeting a picture of himself, sitting in his presidential chair, saying, "This seat's taken."
Politics aside, the empty chair started out as a sociodramatic invention, when Dr. J.L. Moreno introduced it in 1921 in his famous theater presentation, asking for a leader to take the "throne" that he placed on a stage in Vienna, Austria. (No one stepped up.) In later years, Moreno's wife and collaborator Zerka Moreno expanded the technique for psychodramatic purposes, with the protagonist talking directly to a significant person during a drama.
See my video here.
See my video here.
I don't think Clint would pass our practitioner's exam. He could have used a director to keep him on task and to encourage him to role reverse with the "other" in the chair. Role reversal -- feeling into the experience of the other -- creates empathy and understanding of the other's viewpoint.
...Something that politics needs more of.
