How to Fall in Love with Life?
Centrum duševního zdraví Olomouc + Palacký University Olomouc
The Czech pilot realisation of the Co-Active Therapeutic Theatre model created with Centrum duševního zdraví Olomouc and Palacký University Olomouc.
- 01 10/2024
Workshop at CDZ
An introductory workshop at the mental health centre allowed clients to try dramatherapeutic exercises and decide whether they wanted to enter the longer process.
- 02 11/2024 – 01/2025
Process and creation
After motivational interviews, a final group was formed and met regularly to explore a shared theme and build material for an original performance.
- 03 11 Feb 2025
Premiere
The premiere took place at Konvikt in Olomouc. More than 100 people attended and the public moment became an important part of the whole process.
- 04 03/2025
3 post-performance meetings
Three follow-up meetings helped the group process the public experience and name what they were taking from it into everyday life.
The group created a performance about how each person can find their own authentic way to fall in love with life. Their path is complicated by Elias, a tempter who does not believe that such a thing can really be possible.
Elias witnesses the scenes of the other characters, questions their courage and keeps his distance. Only at the end does the group help him break his mask, allow vulnerability and open himself to friendship. The performance does not prescribe how to live well; it encourages curiosity and a search for one’s own path.
The project emerged while Martina Žembová was working as a social worker in the mental health centre, finishing her studies at Palacký University and attending a dramatherapy conference in the Netherlands where the authors of the CoATT model presented their approach. That experience sparked the wish to test the model in Czechia for the first time.
Together with Mgr. Petr Kosek, she first prepared an introductory workshop in the centre. Motivational interviews followed, a final group was formed and several months of regular work connected dramatherapy, theatrical creation and a safely held group dynamic. The process led to a premiere and continued after it.
Participants described gaining more courage for openness, vulnerability and trust in their own inner experience.
Audience members appreciated that the performance did not tell them how to live, but opened space for curiosity, conversation and personal searching.
Professionals and people close to the participants noticed a concrete impact both on the clients themselves and on the audience who came as witnesses of the process.
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Palacký University Olomouc
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Centrum duševního zdraví Olomouc
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