Play: Case study

'After all this time, I still feel the same'

In a hospital ward for elderly people suffering from acute mental illness, the Sesame session focused that week on the story of Grandmother Spider. In the story it is the oldest and wisest of the animals that crafts a bowl out of the earth to bring back the sun to a now darkened and dying world.

As preparation for enacting the story, the group were given a ball of wool and asked to hold on to a piece and then choose someone else in the group. Before long, a web of woollen connections had grown around the circle. People began to tug gently at the wool, testing out the strength of those choices.

One woman commented that it reminded her of playing Cat's Cradle as a child: a memory of closeness and companionship that had resurfaced at a time of great distress in her life. But more than a sense of what had been lost - the group were playing in the here and now, and re-experiencing closeness and companionship. And yet, in many ways, the group were 'only' playing.