Rehearsing what we call life

Abstract

This article is part of a doctoral research project that investigates artistic workshops developed in public health institutions in the province of Mendoza, Argentina. In particular, it analyses the experience of the theatre workshop implemented at the Provincial Comprehensive Adolescent Emergency Care Centre (CIPAU), a facility specialising in subjective emergencies for adolescents and young people in the province. The study aims to examine whether the activities carried out in this space can be understood as artistic practices, as well as to analyse the foundations and methods of their institutional implementation. The research adopts a qualitative approach, based on a case study that combines interviews, field notes and the systematisation of eight workshop sessions. The results show that the theatre workshop operates as another tool within the interdisciplinary approach promoted by National Mental Health Law No. 26,657. Far from focusing on the final artistic production, the focus is on the shared creative process, understood as a means of fostering bonds and unique forms of encounter between the participants. The workshop format is characterised by its flexibility and situated perspective, adapting to the desires, needs and possibilities of the young people who pass through the institution. It is concluded that the workshop constitutes a relational and collaborative artistic practice, capable of enabling other ways of addressing urgent issues and rehearsing possible ways of being with others through artistic creation.
 

Artistic practices, Mental health, Adolescents and young people, Theatre workshop, Interdisciplinarity