Monday, August 23, 2010

Baltimore Bound


RWTG will travel to Baltimore, Maryland in November to reprise Off the Map, a play by Joan Ackerman, for the 55th Annual Institute and Conference of the American Academy of Psychotherapists.

RWTG is a troupe of American group therapists that presents stage plays to illuminate the complexity of relationships and the universal need for mutual recognition and community wellbeing for audiences of psychotherapists around the world.

Following the performance, an exploration of the play’s themes and their relevance to the conference theme, Generativity: Energizing the Life of the Therapist, will be conducted.

As with group therapy, Off the Map is about discovery, growth and healing entwined. Protagonist Bo Groden looks back on the summer when she was eleven years old and everything changed. Serving as the play’s narrator, she sifts through the memories of an unusual childhood spent in the wilds of Northern New Mexico where her enterprising parents forged a modest life off the land and the local dump. She courageously recalls the difficult summer when her father Charlie spiraled into depression. Young Bo’s prayers for a miracle to be delivered from a mother who gardens in the nude and a father who cannot stop weeping are finally answered when young William Gibbs, a rookie IRS tax collector, arrives with a fever, an audit and a long-held secret. Healing forces are mysteriously set in motion, and dreams that once seemed impossible even to contemplate, find exuberant and transformative expression.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Our Irish Odyssey

RWTG's Belfast Contingent
(from left to right, Rob Williams, Kavita Avula, Tom Teasley, Mary Doyle Dluhy, John Dluhy, Maryetta Andrews-Sachs, and Bob Schulte)

The Red Well Theater Group presented Off the Map at the 13th Annual Northern Ireland Group Therapy Conference, on August 12, 2010. The Conference was sponsored by the Boston-Threshold Group. This year's theme was "Recovery and Reparation through Groups: Courage to Dream Again."
 
The Boston-Threshold Group includes professionals from Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Norther Ireland who wish to promote the theory and practice of group psychotherapy. The founders of the Group are Cecil A. Rice, PhD, Raman Kapur, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, Kathleen Ulman, PhD and Patricia M. Doherty, EdD. This year's Conference Organizing Committee includes from the USA, Patricia Doherty EdD., Cecil A. Rice, PhD, Kathleen Ulman PhD, Sara Emerson, LICSW and Hallie Lovett, PhD and from Northern Ireland, Sharon Foster, Threshold Network of Clinics.

RWTG is very grateful to the B-T Group for the invitation to present and we wish to express heartfelt thanks to Cecil Rice and Sharon Foster in particular for their generous support throughout the conference planning process and the conference experience itself.

The cast for Off the Map included RWTG members Mary Doyle Dluhy as Adult Bo, Maryetta Andrews-Sachs as Arlene, John Dluhy as Charlie, Rob Williams as William Gibbs, and guest artists Kavita Avula as young Bo and Laurie Slade from the U.K. as George. Guest artist Tom Teasely provided music and the play was directed by Bob Schulte.
  
Here are some pictures from our journeys in Northern Ireland.
John and Mary Dluhy stealing a quiet moment with our field trip organizer, Kevin Baird, during a visit to a memorial to people killed during the troubles.
Maryetta Andrews-Sachs contemplating the faces of some of the victims of the violence that has occurred in Northern Ireland over the past five decades.
John Dluhy and Rob Williams sharing a friendly moment awaiting a boat trip to view the ship building facilities where the Titanic was built in Belfast harbor.
Bob Schulte, Maryetta Andrews-Sachs and John Dluhy in front of the "Big Fish," one of the most famous landmarks on the Belfast waterfront.
Tom Teasley leaving his mark on the "Peace Wall."