Dramatherapists often draw on biographical performance to facilitate individual and social change, often within the public sphere. This paper considers the cultural politics of biographical performance through the ideas of Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and the practices of Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Augusto Boal, Susan Bennett, and Julie Salverson amongst other applied theatre and dramatherapy practitioners. The author discusses the concept of witnessing and proposes a relational aesthetic in dramatherapy to explore how dramatherapists may create socially effective and affective performances that bring audiences into greater proximity to each other, to the issues staged, and to those performing.
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