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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast, You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: Today I'm excited to welcome my guest, Anath Garber.

[0:31] Anath Garber: Thank you for having me.

[0:31] Tonya Pinkins: She is a psychologist and a certified psychodrama therapist, um, practicing all over the globe, including sessions by telephone to accommodate people who live in remote places. So welcome, Anna.

[0:30] Anath Garber: Thank you for having me.

[0:33] Tonya Pinkins: I'm excited. It's wonderful. So you brought this tone with you.

[0:37] Anath Garber: Uh, I'm holding it in my hand. It's a big blue book called Who Shall Survive?

[0:42] Tonya Pinkins: What is this book that you brought for me to see?

[0:45] Anath Garber: So this book titled Who Shall Survive is so heavy that the obvious answer is this one who can carry it. And so it's like a heavy lifter. But actually, it's his opus where he wrote all his ideas were there.

[1:05] Tonya Pinkins: Who is he?

[1:06] Anath Garber: He is J.L. Moreno, of course. Jacob Levi Moreno, who started group psychotherapy, psychodrama, and sociometry.

[1:16] Anath Garber: In this book, he actually explains all of it. I brought it because there's a personal dedication to me there. So I wanted to.

[1:23] Tonya Pinkins: It says personal. Now, what was the question? What's that?

[1:29] Anath Garber: I just wanted to know what this book was because you just introduced three words that are new to everybody: psychodrama, sociometry, and there was group psychotherapy.

[1:40] Anath Garber: So JL Moreno started the first all the triad.

[1:45] Tonya Pinkins: The triads. What's the triad?

[1:46] Anath Garber: Well, the three months.

[1:47] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, the triadrama, the sociometry, and group psychotherapy.

[1:52] Anath Garber: They all kind of relate. So I'm going to ask you to define each one.

[1:56] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[1:56] Anath Garber: So we start with psychodrama, which is not what everybody thinks, the crazy acting out in the office. And because it entered colloquial words, it really has a bad connotation now. But it really means drama means action, psyche means soul, so it's the soul in action, the psyche in action.

[2:22] Anath Garber: It makes total sense that since life is lived in action, if we want some therapeutics, they should be done in action. It's just kind of logical. To me, it was wow, finally somebody is talking my language. Obviously, in this Aristotle, everybody knew of the healing nature of theater. It's a catharsis. We like a good story because it talks about us. We like good theater because we can identify, we can get a catharsis of integration of some change.

[2:55] Anath Garber: So um, it would make sense to create theater of truth, that's what we call what he called it, uh, where instead of listening to somebody else's story, my story can be. I don't have to be multi-talented, I can be just a little human being, and my story is enacted, and I can get catharsis from changes that I can make because I've seen what's happening, and maybe there are better ways of doing it.

[3:29] Tonya Pinkins: So, what's different if I come in for a psychodrama session, as opposed to us sitting across the chair from each other or me lying on a couch? What's different in a psychodrama session?

[3:39] Anath Garber: In a psychodrama session, uh, instead of talking about something, you want to reenact it. So you're talking about some problem you have with your husband, your child, etc., you're talking about it. But if I see it, it could be a whole different story. So I'm gonna get up and tell you this week, my husband and I had a fight, and I'm gonna be me, and I'm gonna be my husband, and I'm gonna be whoever walked in, and I'm gonna live the scene out in front of you, the therapist.

[4:12] Anath Garber: It's pretty good. Uh, if it's done in a group setting, which is the preferable setting for psychodrama, you have many people taking many roles.

[4:21] Tonya Pinkins: Pause for a second, we keep hitting this. So we've been a lot of thuds.

[4:29] Anath Garber: And do I move my hat?

[4:32] Tonya Pinkins: You are fine. I'll just reposition the mic.

[4:36] Anath Garber: So you can still keep your hands moving and it won't hit you below.

[4:39] Tonya Pinkins: There you go. Okay. Okay. Okay. So let's go back and talk about how psychodrama is best in a group setting. So, how does it work?

[4:47] Anath Garber: So, in a group setting, you have many people who would be competing for attention. Okay. And so I'm gonna cast all these people in the roles of my life. Well, we firstly there may be many more than we need. They will be vying for attention. Um, or sometimes they won't be, they'd be cold, and you have to warm them up to actually want to enact something.

[5:13] Anath Garber: So, in the case that everybody's warmed up, you have to kind of cool them down and choose one that most of the group identifies with their problems. So here I want to work on this, says A, B says I want to work on this, and another one wants to work on this. Then we have the group come and stay behind, let's say each of them and see who is most interested.

[5:32] Anath Garber: So there is this what we called sociometric choice. The person who gets the most number of choices would be chosen because he represents mostly the interest of the group.

[5:44] Tonya Pinkins: But don't charming people just get more interest? I mean, there's certain people who are more charming or more compelling. What about the wallflowers? Do they ever get their chance? I mean, does anybody ever get behind the wallflower?

[5:54] Anath Garber: Yeah, there are many closet wallflowers. So, yes, yes, there is a chance of somebody who says, I always I'm always rejected. Whenever I ask for anything, I cannot get. Here was another example. Everybody got a raise except for me. Well, how many people would be interested in seeing that? Would be much more interesting than somebody, how can I seduce another woman effectively? Maybe you will get nothing.

[6:23] Anath Garber: Okay, so uh sociometrically, the group decides whose issue is going to be enacted in sociodrama on that particular session. Okay, and then what happens?

[6:35] Anath Garber: And so then we state the problem and we portray the problem.

[6:42] Tonya Pinkins: Do I tell the people the dynamic in my house, or do we all just see it? But do I tell them? Like, how do they know how my husband behaves or how my child behaves?

[6:52] Anath Garber: You probably started saying we had an enormous fight, my husband almost hitting the kid, I cannot take it anymore. I don't know, this violence is really getting out of hand.

[7:05] Anath Garber: Okay, so let's see what's the violence. How does it work? Let's see this exact concrete example. Then there are all these techniques. You can get out of this scene and look at it. You can see your contribution to the fight, you can see the child from the point of view of the child, you can see it from many points of views.

[7:25] Anath Garber: So, me, I can be any of the people in the drama, or I can choose to watch other people be all of the people in my drama.

[7:34] Anath Garber: Yeah, well, as a matter of fact, it's kind of true to say you can choose, but it usually be the director who lets who will consult with you what would be the right way to go.

[7:46] Tonya Pinkins: And the director, you're the director, you're the psychologist, right?

[7:49] Anath Garber: Right.

[7:50] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. So then we have kind of an agreement that I'm going to direct this show, and trusting that we have an alliance because we want to make it a healing experience for you and everybody.

[8:04] Anath Garber: So when you walk out, there's huge, some huge truth was revealed. Maybe the truth is that the kid was always unwanted. And since it was never discussed, all of a sudden slowly there are all these eruptions. And this is coming out from strangers just improvising my life. It's very interesting, and that's called tele.

[8:27] Tonya Pinkins: What's that called?

[8:33] Anath Garber: Tele, and I explained tele is a mutual feeling. It's incredible to see in an open session that was running in New York, a person would choose somebody over there to be their father, and you didn't have to train them. They're just like perfect. It's amazing.

[8:49] Anath Garber: It's totally amazing. When it happens over and over, you know, there is some way that we interact, that we are not conscious, but if we develop that quality, our life changes.

[9:06] Tonya Pinkins: And what is this quality when you want to develop?

[9:11] Anath Garber: Um, it sounds very esoteric. This vibration, this kind of energy that connects us all. That I know that somehow that feels right, not that. You probably had many times that experience.

[9:25] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I think that I mean to be an actor, that's a lot of what our experience is, but also as actors, we're also sometimes the most self-destructive people and tuning into the things that are absolutely worse for us.

[9:38] Anath Garber: That is so true because as an actor, you have to tune out of yourself and you have to tune into a role that can be totally not good for you. Therapeutically speaking. If you're lucky to have 300 performances of something that's therapeutic for you, that's great, but that doesn't happen often.

[9:58] Anath Garber: So really you have to empty yourself of you and be somewhere else. This is the other way right. You have to kind of tune totally into you, totally sense your inner being.

[10:15] Tonya Pinkins: Totally sense my inner being.

[10:17] Anath Garber: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I've always thought I'm a much better actor than I am a human. Like I have great boundaries as an actor, I know my worth, I can do all these things as an actor that I make total mistakes in my life.

[10:32] Tonya Pinkins: I am totally, totally with you. Because I started from acting, and I couldn't wait to be told what to do. I know how to do what you tell me to do, but left alone, well, how do I decide whether this is right? Is that right? I cannot know. How do I know?

[10:46] Anath Garber: Exactly. How will I figure out? Where is the director? Tell me.

[10:51] Tonya Pinkins: Well, God is the biggest director.

[10:53] Anath Garber: But so for me, it was like, wow, that is incredible. There is a way that I could navigate the world in a way that would be conducive to me. And there we come with the concept of spontaneity.

[11:10] Anath Garber: So I have to plug it in. Because really what he says, who shall survive, and the three so applicable to 21st century is the spontaneous person, sort of homo spontaneous.

[11:24] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. What does it mean spontaneity?

[11:28] Anath Garber: Spontaneity means uh from the Latin word from within. But concretely, the working definition could be a new response to an old situation or a novel response to a new situation.

[11:44] Anath Garber: So if you are in the sense that you can always come with a new response to an old situation or novel response to a new situation in a state of spontaneity.

[11:55] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I think like the Meisner acting technique is very much about this living truthfully and fully in imaginary circumstances. The lines are always the same, the blocking is always the same, but you know, the air is different, the weather is different, the audience is different, my day was different, I ate something different, and so we meet each other with all of these structures that are the same every night, but the response to one another is going to be new and different, and it's gonna be a new play every night.

[12:24] Anath Garber: If you're the kind of an actress and you are who is totally present, but sometimes you go to the same performance that somebody raved about, and it gives you cold. The people were not connecting, they were thinking about tomorrow, they were saying the lines, they were not there.

[12:40] Anath Garber: So there is the sense that you're totally acquainted with, which is form of spontaneity, which is mindfulness, being attuned in. So you walk, and that you immediately do, you don't even notice anymore. Okay, there were a problem at home, it was this and that. I'm leaving it. This is a sacred place, and frankly, this is the most sacred place where your feet are now.

[13:07] Anath Garber: You haven't turned it off, they're open. You that call is open, and that person is listening to it. You didn't hang up on them, they're just like saying hello, and did you turn off the ringer?

[13:20] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I just did.

[13:21] Anath Garber: Okay, sorry.

[13:23] Tonya Pinkins: It's okay.

[13:25] Anath Garber: Okay. So where I am right now is the most important place. My feet right here on the ground.

[13:29] Tonya Pinkins: But the other thing is for me, when I am having the best acting, my attention is on my partner.

[13:39] Anath Garber: And I always say, if I'm working with someone who's really good, I don't have to do anything but put all my attention on them and respond, and they are essentially giving me my performance.

[13:51] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, yes.

[13:52] Anath Garber: And so you go here to improve, right?

[13:57] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah. I'm improving within the structure of some blocking and some words that I have to say.

[14:07] Anath Garber: Oh, it's it's it's such a it's like sex, it's like great sex. It's it's it's it's orgastic. It's just is. It's that flow. And when you had with another human being, it's just so incredible. So to have really the privilege to run that many shows in which such things happen, it's really really energizing. But I can't imagine that with a bunch of non-actors who maybe don't talk and they gotta make up things and they're self-conscious and they don't like to public speak. Like I can't imagine that you can have that with a bunch of you know, non-performer people.

[14:45] Tonya Pinkins: You're saying you can?

[14:47] Anath Garber: Totally. What is strange is everybody's kind of a performer. You know, you perform, you pretend to be something, you pretend to be something else. What's difficult is to be oneself if there is such a thing as oneself. So again, according to J.L. Moreno, there is no such a thing as self. Which is true in all spiritual practices. There is not I, it's a fiction. What's not a fiction is the role we take. So according to him, the self is the result of the roles we take. The more roles we take, the more elaborate is our sense of ourself. But it's roles. You are not born with a self.

[15:31] Tonya Pinkins: Well, that sort of makes me think of the first folio and how um Shakespeare, when she, yes, I said she was laying out the folio, she would call different characters by their role in the scene. Uh, in like All's Well that Ends Well, sometimes there was she was the countess, but when she was talking to her son, she's written as mother. And he would list characters by the role they were playing in the scene, even if their character had a name or a title he she listed them by their role that's because I I'm in the camp that Mary Sidney Herbert wrote all of what we know as Shakespeare. I refer to God as she's I do that too. Just so when I recite uh I am I recite usually in Hebrew where there is feminine in you so usually I say the feminine for God because why should I not worship that part of me so that's another theatricality there because God is neither female or male but but I want to get used to the part of the female that is in that is in the Godhead.

[16:41] Anath Garber: Mm-hmm. So so we've got a bunch of strangers and they're all they all know every you're saying every stranger in my group therapy knows how to play different roles and we're gonna get up I'm gonna either watch or they're gonna I'm gonna interact with them and how am I gonna get to my catharsis in this okay well I guess I probably forgot to mention one thing okay that I can see is missing. How do you get called people get on the stage and act? You won't okay. What is needed is a process.

[17:14] Anath Garber: Okay and the process of warming up which is the most important thing in the universe because for every action there is a warm-up even if we're not aware of really yeah which some people cannot fall asleep because they skip the warm up of going to sleep like maybe they say I'm not taking off my makeup and then I cannot fall asleep, so I have to get out and do these things, and they produce a state of sleep. The most obvious um um example of a need to warm up, which as I get older, it's easier for me to say in a big hall is sex. If you don't warm up, nothing will happen. And adequate warm-up, think of sex, brings to great action. So if you just warm up, the action will take over. And then there is another thing to close it. Okay, so somebody rolls over. There is a need to close something, and then maybe share the experience, and that's really how I describe the psychodrama session.

[18:14] Anath Garber: So you warm up the audience to become a group. If they're not a group, if they're not united, nothing will happen. It's a bunch of people in the audience. Cold. But think it's like a circle, they unite it through warm-up. And could be taken from Stanislavski's, from improv, from anything that I can make up or at the moment, they become a group. Out of the group, it will emerge protagonists. I may sense it just by the way they energetically vibrate. There is a certain look when people get triggered, they're ready. There is just a body sense. Gran was a genius. They will hundreds of people. Come on. And he was extremely charismatic. He would hold the hand, and the people people would melt. So that the protagonist emerges out of the group, and all your question was irrelevant, and then he's really eating from your hand, because then he will choose the roles for people to play.

[19:16] Anath Garber: The first time when I experienced my first psychodrama, I just could not believe that experience. I was in Vicen, and Zerka, who is his wife, directed it. And I had a recurrent dream which was driving me crazy in Israel, sort of more like an out-of-body experience. And I was really at the time I had no idea that people wanted to have out-of-body experiences. I didn't want them. So I thought, you know, they're going to hospitalize me.

[19:44] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, like you're mentally ill.

[19:45] Anath Garber: Yeah, yeah. That's why I have to be a psychologist just to prevent such a thing. And so it was always 3 a.m., but it was a different time here. And all of a sudden I have this dream. I'm really scared because I'm telling the dream out.

[20:01] Tonya Pinkins: Again, I knocked it.

[20:02] Anath Garber: Yeah.

[20:02] Tonya Pinkins: Tell us the dream.

[20:03] Anath Garber: Yeah, every time you touch it, I get a fix of base.

[20:07] Tonya Pinkins: It's okay.

[20:07] Anath Garber: Okay. Tell us the dream. Tell us the recurring dream.

[20:09] Anath Garber: I cannot remember it so many years ago. I remember only that I'll be flying through the window out and be afraid that I'll drop down. What precipitated it? I don't know. Obviously, I know enough that it has to be involved some trauma because people don't do out-of-body experience if they so and were never traumatized. But anyhow, in the morning, usually group members directed to learn they directed the psychodrama. So one of incredible psychiatrists from Warren's Ares directs me, nothing really happens. I only cry. Zerka comes, and there I experienced the magic of psychodrama. When she held my hand, it was as if she already moved me to another sphere. So there was something. And then as I was telling this story, and she was creating scenes and scenes, of course, you know, to do with my mother, with some sexual abuse, whatever.

[21:12] Anath Garber: Um, and she was in her role as a director yelling at my mother, and I thought, how dare she? Just like, who yells at my mother? Nobody ever yells at my mother. But it was an incredible experience that somebody could stand up and say, maybe that was not a why right way to deal with that. And then somehow the session ended, and I could see how present I was. Everything was very clear, the places were very clear, and then the group shared experiences. Obviously, many people had many experiences, and that's one way of bringing the protagonist back to reality, and also the poor audience that is triggered with many feelings, can pay back for the story you told.

[22:01] Tonya Pinkins: So you keep calling them the audience, but the audience you mean all the the participants in the group therapy.

[22:07] Anath Garber: It's more like spec type spec actors in the world. The members of the group are not actually um improvising your life. Group members.

[22:18] Tonya Pinkins: Got it.

[22:18] Anath Garber: Because really, that that's there is no audience. They have to become a group. Without a group, there is no experience. You can trust, you have to be trusting to allow yourself to have that experience. I always think that the theater is a very sacred and holy experience, and that a lot of times um audiences do love a talk back. You you um were one of the therapist facilitators for my plays, Truth and Reconciliation of Women, which is a series of 21-act plays uh about the ways in which women abuse one another, because that's an issue that's in the forefront of my mind, and I feel like you were really good at uh helping the audience to share what it was like to watch these various scenes where women were in deep conflicts within with each other over sex abuse or you know tribes murdering other tribes and then it would touch something very personal in people's audience in the audience. Sometimes they would get upset uh at how we chose to let the story work out. What was your experience of that?

[23:27] Anath Garber: You just described it.

[23:29] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my experience of facilitating that is it like the psychodrama what we had going on at Truth and Reconciliation of Women just say like if psychodrama is hundred percent that would be like 10% 15%. It was sensing the where the group was daring not to ask two pointed question to scare people but just enough to invite people to share the experiences. I probably shared mine because it always helps if you share yours. So you show a vulnerability and this kind of modeling that other people can show their vulnerability. And it was also all the actresses they embodied all that many of them had experienced some kind of sort of trauma in the life too they were too good if to just were very sensitive. So that was a way when people were telling their stories is paying back for revealing their inner nature. Like in whenever you act, it's really so much of you out there. Even so it's hidden behind the role, but it's you.

[24:39] Anath Garber: Yeah. You know it. And when you really really express yourself, it's like you really, it's way more than denuding yourself sexually. It's like totally open book. And if somebody and that's when if somebody opens a candy or something, it's like scratching the inner body. Um so this was the idea of creating a theater of truths that would be healing. And his idea was that in every city there will be like a theater, you can come in and have an open session. And actually on 78th Street and Broadway, where now it's the comedy club, that's where there was the Moreno Institute where I directed open sessions for many years. And then it closed. It doesn't exist anymore. It's usually insurance. What what they think that you're gonna get somebody triggered and then they you won't be able to uh well part of it was Moreno who was not a big businessman, nor his wife sold the building for the right, right?

[25:46] Tonya Pinkins: No, they couldn't afford it.

[25:48] Anath Garber: It was just instead of raising some money and buying it, yeah, they kept the stuff in weekend, which no never will getting up to beacon would be hard. Yeah, and also the value of their property will never go up. So basically it's money that but so this is you're saying I mean, because now I'm interested and I I can think of a place where you could probably possibly do this. Um this was people could drop in and have a psychodrama session about what was actually going on in their life.

[26:24] Anath Garber: Oh, yeah, I think the actor center.

[26:26] Tonya Pinkins: Love this.

[26:27] Anath Garber: Five bucks.

[26:28] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, now it'd probably be more like 10 or 15.

[26:30] Anath Garber: Yeah, but yeah. There were groups coming, um, sometimes colleges coming, some of a group of people coming. It would be like entertainment, and um oh, you know, the guy who the neurotic Jewish guy was.

[26:49] Tonya Pinkins: Woody Allen.

[26:50] Anath Garber: Yeah, Woody Allen was a many, many actress were there. There was so when you see uh he uses in many of his movies, he uses a double. He was the first one to use it, but he borrowed it from Moreno, where she says, you know, there's usually what she thinks, right? This is what I say, but here is what I think, which is not sad, which is a double.

[27:15] Tonya Pinkins: What is a double?

[27:17] Anath Garber: A double is somebody that will express something that you think, but may not say, may not get in touch that you're saying it. There is other techniques that he totally stole.

[27:31] Tonya Pinkins: Uh Woody Allen do psychodrama with Moreno?

[27:34] Anath Garber: Yeah, I it was before my time, yeah.

[27:36] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, so Woody Allen did psychodrama.

[27:38] Anath Garber: Okay. Yeah, many, many, many actors did it. Um to say stall is probably not really. Well, they say they say amateurs borrow geniuses steal.

[27:50] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, so that's a good saying.

[27:56] Anath Garber: Yeah.

[27:58] Tonya Pinkins: I'm Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT. That was part one of my conversation with psychodrama therapist Anath Garber. Come back for part two.