1 Introduction

Liminality demands effectively a rethinking of time. As a process or a journey (from separation to incorporation; from one status to the next), liminality is well researched originally by anthropologists since 1960s. The concept has been gradually introduced in psychosocial studies and social psychology as in the interface between experience and social (dis)order (Stenner 2017); and in professional educational practice in relation to supporting student reflection (Rantatalo and Lindberg 2018). Recently it has been suggested that modern life social exercises (theatre, literature, music, games, mass media etc.) could create liminal spaces and take people through a transition period through immersive experiences. Design and creative practices are shown to encourage self-expression and experimenting with new ideas through the creation of liminal spaces triggering as a result transformations in the mindset, knowledge, emotions and social relations of those involved (Lam et al. 2018). Sociodrama on the other hand offers the opportunity to relive social experiences through spontaneous enactment; to explore and create new worlds by transcending time and space on the sociodramatic stage. The Covid-19 era has created an undetermined environment within which we have dared to draw the threads of transdisciplinary theorization and open up the discussion about the linkages of liminality and sociodrama practicing. We therefore assert that a liminality lens has the potential to add to the research on and practice of Morenian methods and in particularly the role that a state of ‘undeterminedness’ plays in the psychodramatic and sociodramatic experience.

2 Liminality—Swinging in-between ‘What was’ and ‘What will be’

Liminality is a form of holding the tension between one space and another. It is in these transitional moments of our lives that authentic transformation can happen. (Rohr 2020)

LiminalityFootnote 1 is an inner state or an outer situation where individuals, groups, societies, civilisations can begin to think and act in genuinely new ways (Rohr 2004). It can be physical (between two others like stairwells; hallways; airports) or abstract (in-between state of mind like teenage years; going to sleep; between jobs). It allows a transition to a new set of limits through a temporary suspension of norms imposed on possibilities or social relationships by structures and patterns of sociocultural systems (Stenner 2021). Liminality has both ‘space’ and ‘temporal’ dimensions and by definition it is not permanent. Liminal periods are often characterised by the production of new forms of self.

A liminal space is the waiting area between one point in time and space and the next. It is both the transitional or transformative space and the experience that goes with it and it implies obligatory and functional breaking up of the usual social rules and roles. Liminoid spaces are voluntary ‘play’ areas with the expectation of an enjoyment that is unmotivated by gain, and has no utilitarian nor ideological purpose: a voluntary performative event of old-fashioned rituals is liminoid (Turner 1974) just like the experiential exploration of liminal spaces with people joining a flying trapeze class at 40 ft, amongst trees at dusk to explore individual and organisational fear when facing the unknown (Harris 2014). Liminal experiences are differentiated into unstaged vs staged, e.g. experience of a real crisis such as a natural disaster compared to the staged enactment of that crisis (Turner 1982); or spontaneous (which happen to us) vs devised (which we do to ourselves). Devised experiences are culturally organised, suspended from reality, and mediated through liminal affective technologies such as pilot projects, urban experiments, novels (Stenner 2019). Any creation of circumstances permits a distinct self-enjoyment of affectivity referred to as liminal affectivity, an emotional factor, “a transformed and heightened condition of potentiality for being affected and affecting events” (Kofoed and Stenner 2017, p. 171). It can be generated and channeled in many ways, ranging from unstaged encounters with existential change and social collapse to use of arts, sports, cultural forms.

Liminality is full of contradictory emotional states as to ‘what will/may be’. It is characterised by possibilities, potential, renewal, excitement vs sense of loss for what has passed, uncertainty, discomfort, fear, disorientation, feelings of being unprepared as to what comes next. Its psycho-sociological facets are thought to be “the liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc form the normative constraints [ ] enacting of multiplicity of social roles, and being acutely conscious of membership in some corporate group such as family, [ ] or an affiliation with some pervasive social category such as class, caste, [ ] There is an instant of pure potentiality when everything trembles in the balance” (Turner 1974, p. 75).

Individuals or groups experience liminality at various degrees. It is possible to get ‘stuck’ in liminality when a temporary transition remains unresolved and people feel caught in a suspended transformative phase. Such ‘unlimited transitional status’ is defined as a liminal hotspot, a social psychological phenomenon at various levels from interpersonal dynamics at micro level, through institutions or large-scale historical events at macro level, e.g. languishing—a sense of stagnation and emptiness which is neither sick nor healthy and without knowing why; furlough conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic—suspended employees for indefinite time; migrant conditions in Brexit Britain—workers oscillating between ‘belonging’ and ‘not belonging’. Liminal hotspots are characterised by dynamics of paradox, paralysis, and polarisation and intensified potential for pattern shift (Stenner et al. 2017); as a result their liminal affectivity is one of volatility, vacillation, suggestibility, and paradox due to the prolonged uncertainty, tension and complexity (Kofoed and Stenner 2017).

The global COVID-19 pandemic has been widely recognised as a liminal event, “a phase which comes between past and future yet belongs neither to the past as we knew it, nor to the future as we imagined it.” (Stenner and Kaposi 2020). Its prolonged time span created a complex liminal hotspot of suspended normality unfolding from the microscopic level of the virus to unfamiliar transformations and radical disruption at societal level. Within the COVID-19 hotspot, there are other liminal shifts: from connecting to the Web for information, to connecting through the Web to virtual communities. The accompanied affective intensification of responses is largely negative rather than exhilarating: feelings of loss of empowerment emerged from the coexistence and the interaction of biological, social and psychological uncertainties.

3 Creativity

Creativity, then, is the retention throughout life of something that belongs to infant experience: the ability to create the world. (Winnicott 1990, p. 40)

Creativity is a multifaceted entity integral in innovation processes (new solutions to old problems) (Amabile 1983) whether practising art, solving problems, or in communications. Perceptions of creativity among individuals entail anything depending on the outcome of creative activities e.g. creative processes, practice of self-expression; originality in behaviour; ability to produce novel theories, techniques, etc. Creativity involves playing, a ‘natural’ state related to children, “a state free from inhibitions, controls and socially conditioned responses” (Govan and Munt 2003) and “when we are surprised at ourselves we are creative, and we find we can trust our own unexpected originality” (Winnicott 1990). The potential need for disorder when playing has also been examined along the continuum order-disorder in games (such as the children’s ring-a-ring-a-roses): “we may be disorderly in games [ ] either because we have an overdose of order, and want to let off steam [ ], or because we have something to learn through being disorderly” (Sutton-Smith 1972, p. 17). Liminal and liminoid situations are independent settings of creative activity where the emerging new symbols, models and paradigms generate goals, aspirations, incentives, structural models, and raisons d’être (Sutton-Smith 1972).

4 Collective creativity

Collective creativity (CC) is the synergy product of the voluntary participation of many individuals engaging in a mutually beneficial exchange while contributing effort and resources (money, experience, skills) whether working in teams/groups/networks to develop inter- and transdisciplinary novel products and process in business, science, art and digital media (Fields 2020, pp. 52–53). Collective creativity is not simply the sum of the creative processes of the individual group members. An intimate relationship between individual and CC arises from a ‘creative synthesis’: the integration/combination of the cognitive, social and environmental resources of the group members forms the foundation for new extraordinary ideas (Harvey 2014). Individual creativity and the free flow of cognitive thought remain the initial source with the group processes shaping how the creativity of its members is used to generate new combinations of ideas.

The collaborative nature of CC is driven by the specific social interactions of help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinforcing which in turn are enabled by mutual trust (Hargadon and Bechky 2006). Spontaneity is a characteristic of interpersonal interactions and social systems. ‘Eureka moments’ of individual creativity are triggered through spontaneous encounters and interactions within a group which trigger further moments of individual creativity through additional interactions (Cirella 2021).

Studies are pointing to a link between the nature of creativity emerging in groups and the paradox of the tension between freedom and constraint in the creative process itself. Leadership or supportive organisational environment enable collective creativity to benefit from constraints (time pressure, standardised processes, etc.). Group dynamics patterns (either enabling or disabling) shape how the group interprets and responds to constraints: groups able to accept and embrace constraints, perceive opportunity in the constraint and benefit creatively as a result (Rosso 2014).

5 Creative resilience

Resilience, the “bouncing back” from difficult experiences, is defined in psychology as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors” (APA 2012). Creative resilience (CR) is an enhanced capability of individuals, groups and communities that enables optimal responses to life’s challenges, or the imagining of future opportunities and risks. It can be developed experientially within particular contexts (schools, workplaces, hospitals, communities, etc) to support the development of preferable futures. Developing CR leads to personal and collective wellbeing and flourishing (McAra-McWilliam 2020).

6 Physical sociodrama

Sociodrama, for me, is essentially exploring the relationships between the individual and the social or group systems that they interface with. [ ]. The purpose is to gain a systemic view, multiple perceptions. Some people just want everything black and white. Some people can handle multiple points of view, serious amounts of ambiguity and find their way through a complex system. I would see sociodrama as taking people along that path. (Parry 2016, p. 32)

Sociodrama is a deep action method focusing on intergroup relations and was introduced as well as psychodrama by J.L. Moreno (Moreno 1953). It relies on the expansion of imagination and integrates a case study approach and traditional role-play. Systemic consciousness is gained through setting out a chosen system, group interactions, and action-reflection by mirroring the system onto the individual and the group. Like psychodrama, a sociodrama session consists of the warm-up, enactment (dramatisation) and sharing phases and deploys techniques such as role reversal, doubling, mirroring, etc. The personal concern is a basic precondition with collective themes being at the forefront. At its core is Moreno’s binomial of Spontaneity-Creativity: spontaneity is generated during the warming up process and serves as the ‘catalyser’ for the release of creative processes (Moreno 1956, p. 103). The constant rapport between the two produces the cultural conserve which however, once produced, is no longer spontaneous (Moreno 1956, p. 110). The spontaneity and creativity in sociodramatic sessions are synergistic in nature, their level dependent on how the group functions as a whole.

The outcome of spontaneity and creative encounters are the embodied experiences (somatisation). Sociodrama acknowledges and celebrates the importance of the embodied social nature of the multifaceted self and gives space for the acting-sentient bodily self to emerge in a dynamic-social and affective environment during the restructuring of an event on stage; the voluntary, collaborative exploration of social norms and expectations, concepts and issues includes also their shifts in different time periods and cultures. The neural cognitive science of embodied cognition which considers both the brain and the body, highlights the importance of somatisation. Sensory-motor experiences shape our cognition. Simulations of situations/past experiences allow drives and instincts to be re-experienced by the participants, irrespective of the session’s focus. The dynamic between real action (embodiment), language processing, visual scenes and mental motor imagery activates a common network of cortical and subcortical motor centres. As a result embodied simulations lead the attention to “the body that I am” with awareness about somatic resistance, instincts, etc. Even observer participants map the actions and emotions of any role enactment onto their own motor system and visceromotor and somatosensory systems respectively through embodied empathic inference (Scorolli 2019).

Externalisation of unspoken/unspeakable feelings, distortions in perception or invisible dynamics (concretisation) lead to insights into abstract inner experiences. Concretisation functions as a mechanism of change by externalising a problem, reducing its ambiguity or bypassing restrictive defence mechanisms (Kushnir and Orkibi 2021). Visual displays activate predominantly the right part of the brain, the holistic intuitive side or analogue brain, expanding the thinking processes and allowing spontaneity and creativity to emerge. One experiences the ‘aha’ of discovery as new roles develop and the impact of old patterns and habits in role creating is reduced considerably. The information is then processed by the left part of the brain, the analytical and methodical side or digital brain, precipitating new learning while intellectual knowing stays contained and abstract (Phiskie 2008). It is put forward here that the concretisation benefits at individual level allow the group to access repressed content together enhancing the cohesion and collaborative nature of the group; increasing CC and contributing to the development of a collective creative resilience (CCR). The sharing phase of sociodrama satisfies the needs of the left brain in alignment with Jensen’s recommendations that activities designed only for the right brain (visualising, drawing, role playing) often leave some frustrated unless they are followed up by discussion or some other left hemisphere activity (Jensen 1994).

7 Virtual sociodrama: the pseudo-exhibition phase and the ‘g’ factor

Moreno’s interest in mass media and communication means of his time (radio, cinema, television) is well documented in him developing radio programmes and his proposals for therapeutic films. Moreno never realised his vision of providing healing and role training to larger audiences but his proposal on Therapeutic Motion Pictures was revived and adapted in Brazil in 1980 leading to experimentation with recorded psychodrama/sociodrama sessions (Pamplona da Costa 2006). Electronic technologies were later integrated in supervision (Farnsworth 2011); and therapy (Hudgins 2017; Farnsworth 2017) but video conferencing in sociodrama remained an untapped ground. An explosion of online psychodrama and sociodrama sessions was precipitated by global restrictions on travel and work during the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020 (Eppel et al. 2020; Giacomucci 2021a) and facilitated by the emerging unified communications (UC), a collective term referring to cloud services like Zoom, Webex by Cisco, etc. and a variety of communication tools e.g. video conferencing, desktop sharing, real-time messaging, etc. (Colt 2022). Overnight the computer screen was doubling as a communication means and a production stage.

The absence of a physical stage may demand more attention to the warm up to spontaneity stretching directors’ skills but it does not prevent the development of functional relationships which are the core of effective work (Farnsworth 2011). The integration of UC in the Morenean methods has however shaped aspects of the methodology. Virtual sessions may not be recorded but, unless the Hide Self View option is activated at the start of the session, each participant views on the screen the group including themselves. This creates effectively a phase similar to the exhibition phase of recorded psychodrama where all participants (including the director or therapist) when viewing their recorded session take the role of viewer/spectator in addition to their roles during the recording e.g. director-viewer; auxiliary ego-viewer, etc., (Pamplona da Costa 2006). We refer to this as a ‘pseudo-exhibition phase’ to highlight that this phase, specific to online sessions, does not foster deep emotional experiences as the viewing of recorded psychodrama (Pamplona da Costa 2006). It nevertheless incurs effects of its own. It runs throughout the online session and in parallel to the warm-up, dramatisation and sharing phases. Such sustained (conscious or subconscious) role of participants as spectators may induce additional behaviours with a direct impact on self-perception, engagement, creativity and potentially spontaneity. Such impact is highlighted by contemporary theatre studies on spectatorship from the perspectives of its socio-cultural determinants, conscious cognitions, embodied perceptions and the underlying unconscious mechanisms in emotional engagement (Turri 2015).

An additional aspect for consideration is the gaze, a social theory concept which describe how viewers engage with visual media (Bryson 1988; Reinhardt 2022). Gazing as a nonverbal communication cue stands out in social and non-social interactions. It occurs as early as the age of 5 months influencing impression formation, emotion, compliance, attention and memory. The key neural component of the brain involved is the amygdala which receive input from all senses and process emotional stimuli and cognitive processes. The visual cue of direct gaze has a specific social meaning—it means ‘someone is watching me’ acting specifically on the prosocial mimicry response, which is not consciously controlled (Bohannon 2010). Even brief direct gazing has profound cognitive impact: asking for assistance with eye contact influences the kinematics of a ‘reach and grasp’ action in contrast to the same gesture with no eye contact. Neuro-imaging studies show direct gazing being context-dependent: arousement occurs only when gazing participants also perform a demanding cognitive task with cognitive consequences. “real-world experience suggests that the identity of the person providing direct gaze is likely to be a modulator—responses to direct gaze from a rival or from a potential partner would be very different. Altogether, direct gaze cannot be understood as a signal in isolation, but must be considered in relation to the rest of the social context” (de Hamilton 2016, p.  3). Therefore lack of perceived eye contact has social and communicative ramifications regarding communication efficiency, knowledge sharing, building trust, etc.

In this paper we refer to the gaze as the ‘g’ factor, a characteristic of the online modality and meaning ‘direct gaze’, when a participant views a stimulus (live, photo, video or computer generated) in which eyes appear to gaze directly at the participant (de Hamilton 2016, p. 1). The ‘g’ factor is not currently explicitly controlled in online modality but reports on conducting virtual sessions bear evidence of its presence: “A camera combined with the group context makes some participants feel like they are being watched by a large number of people” (Kornienko 2020). Whether the ‘g’ factor is maintained throughout a session or it fades is unknown but consideration should be given to its cognitive consequences, its role in spontaneity, tele and transference, its potentiality in creating a ‘UC-ego’Footnote 2 and its impact in enhancing self-awareness and in turn influencing spontaneity and collective creativity. We define here a ‘UC-ego’ as being a role, engendering feelings and spontaneity as the viewer’s own representative acting on his/her behalf on the computer screen as in by the screen. It is thought to be similar to Moreno’s audio-ego (Moreno 1944, p. 232).

8 Discussion

Moreno emphasized that spontaneity and creativity are only accessible in the ‘here-and-now’, the present moment being a transition between the past as “memory-in-the-moment of past experiences” and the future as “here and now anticipation-in-the-moment of what might be eventually experienced” (Nolte 2020, p. 131). All intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social change takes place through such process as spontaneity enables openness, reduces inhibitions, and enhances psychological well-being (Giacomucci 2021b). Psychodrama and sociodrama sessions have boundaries and borders whether separating the sessions from the outside world through clear temporal beginning and end or from everyday experience through the sequence of the techniques and enactments. The warm up, sociometric exercises, selection of group topic, role taking, all create boundaries in-between and channel the affect of the participants. Concepts such as surplus reality allow the opportunity to renegotiate experiences free of usual rules and constraints. This congruence with Turner’s and Stenner’s accounts on liminality renders the Morenean action methodologies as liminal affective technologies facilitating transitions from one state or experience to another by “amplifying imaginative and emotional processes and linking these cultural experiences to actual process of psychosocial transformation” (Stenner 2021, p. 18).

Each time a role is taken or abandoned at free will within the simulated experience constitutes a liminoid experience. Individual techniques (such as director’s interview) create brief, small-scale devised experiences. Moving in and out of the warm up and enactment phases, themselves devised liminal experiences, and holding one’s self within a phase generate considerable liminal affectivity. Tools such role-reversal or novel exercises developed by practitioners to train people in ‘the moving on process’, such as the spectogram (Kole 1967) or Liz White’s Janus Gate (White 2002), reinforce learning on how to hold liminality, tolerate uncertainty and focus on emerging opportunities instead of being overpowered by the unknown.

Managing the transitory experience of participants into a liminoid space of unlimited potentiality and ambivalence is critical in defining the individual and the group experience of liminality. It relies heavily on the director’s skills and experience. The spontaneity exhibiting by enacting participants is a reaction to the self-occasioned performativity of experience and it triggers or augments in turn the creativity potential of individuals and group. At individual level it allows exploration of liminal areas of topics related to the individual’s functioning state in response to the context they are in. Even the silent observers (not undertaking role) are linked by “connectional silence” which may still indicate reflective suspension or mixed and ambiguous emotions or “communicative silence”, which can convey social intentions and requests. The observed transformative outcomes echo those of liminality: “By removing the limits or rules of everyday reality, human experience can be canalised into a space that allows for creative expressions and escalation of affect that are rarely possible in most everyday settings” (Wagoner and Zittoun 2021, p. 93).

Group interactions enable CC starting from a free flow of cognitive thought at individual level and leading to a collaborative (re)making of their world. The liminoid experiences equip the group with the capacity, and the participants with the ability, to mine the potential of spontaneous liminal spaces. Surplus reality expands to its true Dionysian nature in sociodrama sessions and it becomes “an intersection between different realities, known and unknown, where the ego’s ability to control and distinguish ceases” (Blomkvist and Rützel 1994). What is often perceived as a world of chaos within sociodramatic sessions, it is precisely “a liminoid space within liminoid space” where adversity is not considered as right or wrong but something that one accepts and prepares to respond to. Sociodrama not only welcomes the notion of surprise as in Winnicott’s “returning to infant experience” through playing with possibilities but also Sutton-Smith’s need for disorder through exploring evoked feelings of crisis in a safe space. It is within the above framework of creativity and liminality that we examine the impact of CC at community level as experience by iSCAN, the sociodrama network which originated in UK and expanded to Germany, USA, Australia and RomaniaFootnote 3.

The relationship between spontaneous and devised liminal experiences becomes key in managing uncomfortable liminal hotspots such as the pandemic one. Devised liminal experiences can process the raw experiences of spontaneous liminality and coordinate the significant disruption of people’s routine psychosocial experience and activities to reach a good enough attunement (Beckstead 2021, p. 92). The online modality enabled an exponential increase in the availability of sociodrama sessions delivered by the iSCAN practitioners during the pandemic and increased attendance from across the world, something not possible before, causing an increased exposure to liminoid experiences. The precipitated increase in CC has led to a CCR within the iSCAN community: testimony to that is the iSCAN’s a track record in online workshops and innovations such as adapting the descriptions of levels of role playing for a wider audience (Adderley 2021). The continuous production of sociodrama by the same network of people (with varying membership at different times) may in fact indicate that this specific network is gradually becoming a social system with shared values and purpose, that of the preservation and expansion of the sociodramatic methodology or ‘their system of beliefs and practices’.

The biggest achievement of iSCAN is however the recognition and acceptance of the in-betweenness and the uncertainty of the surrounding liminal hotspot coupled with the unenforced conscious collaboration to face the unknown together, to share sense-making and build capacity in the online modality and “also to provide a connecting matrix for the participants as we entered our first lockdown” (Adderley 2021). To use the parable of the trapeze, sociodrama has become the safety net for its members who as trapeze artists are hurtling through the air from one bar to the next. The group trust gives room to the director to open liminoid spaces for genuine spontaneous encounter.

The online modality presents constraints to the early phases of creativity within the virtual sessions. Whether the group benefits from these constraints or not, depends on mutual trust within the group, confidence to ask for help/offer help and on the director’s skillset regarding when and how to generate liminoid spaces and how to guide participants in transitioning through them. Adderley’s account indicates that iSCAN’s supportive environment triggers enabling dynamics: the network demonstrates a heightened collective awareness and understanding of positive and negative aspects of the constraints imposed by the online modality: “to do an adequate warm-up [ ] takes considerable time, and without it the resulting enactment will struggle to deepen beyond the superficial. Our iSCAN group settled [ ] for three-hour workshops [ ] to fulfil the warm-up/enactment/sharing trio of the normal Morenian structure, but also all the other time-consuming aspects of the online environment, such as movement in and out of breakout rooms, on and off screen, etc.” (Adderley 2021, p. 288). As a result they become resourceful and collaborative resolving unexpected issues whether mundane such as unstable connection or critical such as differences in digital literacy within the group: “Different members of our group took on the lead facilitator role in these early workshops, with others offering technical and breakout room support” (Adderley 2021, p. 284).

The iSCAN sessions may superficially appear unconnected but the original aim (or contract) agreed in their first meeting of the group binds them all. The authors believe that the CCR precipitated within this particular community of practitioners is an accumulative cultural conserve of all the sessions. Furthermore this highlights the role of sociodrama as the dynamic, strategic collective and creative response of their community to build CR and tap to the opportunity offered by the transformative force of the liminal hotspot of COVID-19 in co-creating a new reality: the propagation of sociodrama.

9 Conclusions

The Morenean action methodologies are framed as liminal affective technologies releasing collective creativity during transitions from one state or experience to another.

The online modality has opened the space for the growth of sociodrama and introduced certain specificities in the method (pseudo-exhibition phase, the ‘g’ factor) which warrant further investigation for their impact in spontaneity and creativity.

The organic solidarity of the sociodrama networks shown during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed them to mine the potential of the surrounding liminal hotspot; to build collective creative resilience to the benefit of individuals and group and contribute in the making of a future psycho-socio-political environment. They have amply demonstrated that it is important to:

Come at the world creatively, create the world. It is only what you create that has meaning for you. (Winnicott 1987, p. 101)