Abstract

Drama therapy was still a newfangled academic subject to the students of drama and theatre during the 1980s in Taiwan. While I was an instructor at Fu Hsing Kung College (FHKC), in the Department of Theatre and Film in 1987, I got a scholarship from the government to study an MA programme in Educational Theatre at New York University, where I took some courses with Robert Landy. It is believed, as Landy said, that I was the first Asian scholar from Taiwan to study in this field. From that time on, I not only learned about use of drama therapy in treating individuals with emotional, physical, social and developmental disabilities, etc., but also recognised the importance of contributions to people with special needs. I believed that drama therapy was a new domain and worthwhile developing in Taiwan. So, after completing my MA programme in Educational Theatre ¹ , I went back to Taiwan in 1988 and carried on the research, giving an impetus to the field of drama therapy. I hope that what I have done in Taiwan is similar to what Peter Slade ² did in England. This chapter is my overview of the development of drama therapy in Taiwan.