The theater bug bit Casey Norei Funderburk \u201924 early.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved the play and dress-up portion of it,\u201d said Funderburk of her stage debut in the first-grade musical \u201cHow Does Your Garden Grow?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her appreciation became more refined as she continued acting in high school and community theater in the Columbia, South Carolina, area. \u201cIt really shaped my personality,\u201d said Funderburk. \u201cSome were very strong female roles, and I internalized a lot of those strengths. It made me a lot more confident and extroverted.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also saw similar forces working in others. During one theater workshop in Columbia, participants were challenged to write and perform a monologue in the persona of someone they had unresolved disagreements with. One of Funderburk\u2019s friends cast herself in the role of her own mother, exploring their strained relationship from the opposite perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing where her mom was coming from opened her eyes so much,\u201d said Funderburk. \u201cThey got into the best state they\u2019ve ever been in because they\u2019ve learned to see each other\u2019s point of view. It was amazing to see that work. And that was before I even knew there was such a thing as drama therapy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n This summer, Funderburk is diving deeper into drama therapy as an intern<\/a> with the Applied Theatre Center (ATC<\/a>) in Greenville, South Carolina. The nonprofit uses theatrical methods \u2013 storytelling, improvisation, role-playing and other creative expressions \u2013 to help people understand their challenges and rehearse solutions.<\/p>\n Traveling with ATC to workshops throughout the area, Funderburk is learning more about how drama therapy can help individuals recovering from substance abuse, children in foster care group homes, and migrant communities. A theatre arts<\/a> and psychology<\/a> double major, Funderburk sees a natural interdisciplinary connection between her two fields of study.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re both about understanding people \u2013 understanding different perspectives, understanding how people\u2019s backgrounds shape the way they are,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Among roles in several Furman Theatre productions, a favorite for Funderburk was last season\u2019s \u201cProject Dawn<\/a>,\u201d which was based on a real-life court rehabilitation program for sex workers with repeat offenses in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved that show, because the summer before, I had worked on a helpline for a domestic violence shelter,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t directly related to sex trafficking, but there are a lot of similar themes and lessons. I was talking to women every single day who were trying to work around a system that\u2019s kind of set against them. I also learned a lot about how hard it is for advocacy workers to not take their clients\u2019 problems home with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the next theater season starts, Summer 2023 finds Funderburk, who hopes to get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, working with Kerstin Blomquist<\/a>, an associate professor of psychology, and several other students on a research fellowship<\/a> to help counteract social media\u2019s negative effects on body image.<\/p>\n After Furman, Funderburk\u2019s overall long-term goal is to keep helping those struggling with disordered eating, substance abuse and other mental health challenges \u2013 and she knows there\u2019s more than one approach.<\/p>\n \u201cIdeally, I\u2019d love to advance in the clinical realm and work in research, but I would also love to still work with nonprofits and do drama therapy,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to find a way in my future career to be able to reach out to vulnerable populations. I feel like most of the time the people who need help the most are the ones that don\u2019t have the resources to be able to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Casey Funderburk \u201924 is using an internship with the Applied Theatre Center to explore how drama therapy can reach vulnerable populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":26343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,48,61,41,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internships","category-psychology","category-the-furman-advantage","category-theatre-arts","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Therapeutic theater<\/h3>\n
Creative meets clinical<\/h3>\n