Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Dr. Blythe Corbett: Pioneering Autism Communication through Theater and Fostering Inclusive Expression

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Send us a text What if theater could unlock new dimensions of communication for individuals with autism? Join us as we sit down with the remarkable Dr. Blythe Corbett, a trailblazer from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who has seamlessly intertwined her love for performance with her cutting-edge research in autism. Through the pioneering work of Sense Theater, a nonprofit she founded in 2009, Dr. Corbett has transformed the landscape of social communication interventions, using the power of theater to foster personal growth and social skills in hundreds of participants. Her journey, marked by perseverance and innovation, has garnered significant recognition, including prestigious grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, showcasing the profound impact of blending science and the arts. This episode also takes you behind the scenes of Sense Theater's expansion plans, where inclusivity and creative expression are at the forefront. Through engaging productions, participants tackle themes of belonging, acceptance, and diversity, creating a tapestry of collaboration among individuals from diverse backgrounds. We delve into the thoughtful strategies implemented to support autistic individuals, such as managing anxiety and sensory overload, and the fun, engaging activities like improvisation and joke-telling that teach social cues and body language. Wrapping up, we reflect on the empowering conversations shared and extend an invitation to listeners who might have their own stories and insights to contribute. https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI) The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make your laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World.

Joining us today is Dr. Blythe Corbett. She is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She's here to discuss Sense Theater, a peer-mediated theater-based intervention that has contributed to significant improvements in social functioning in individuals with autism. It's a pleasure to have it here. So thanks for joining us. I'm really excited to be here. Oh, it's my pleasure.

So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing for the autistic community. So it's wonderful to be here. So I am a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. sales. I have had a privilege of working with children and adults with autism for nearly 30 years, and I work with them and my life is enriched by them in many ways. So I am a clinician specifically, a pediatric neurosychologist. I'm also a researcher, so I have several scientific endeavors. and then I also run a nonprofit.

I started a theater program for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. And I think that's especially what we probably want to talk about today. It's called Sense Theater. What led you to start the theater? Tony, similar to you. I have an interesting background as a performer. Oh, that's great. I love it.

I'm a writer and an actor that was my background. I recognized early on as many. people do in the field that our own sense of confidence and social communication can really be enhanced through the performing arts, including acting. Certainly my life was changed notably by being an actor. And so years later, when I went to college, which I went quite late in life compared to many people, I started working with some children with autism. I was intrigued by them. I was drawn to working with them. and I thought in the back of my mind, someday, you know, utilizing theater might be an impactful way to enhance or bring out the social communication and the voices of individuals with autism. And so that's how the idea emerged.

That's great. So when did it start? It was in 2009 that I first started Sense Theater. I originally wrote a couple of grants. None of them were funded. And so I started a nonprofit. it. We were able to, through a music benefit, which you'll appreciate, raise just enough money to pay for the research. Everybody worked for free. But we ended out the number of different measures that we were really impacting some of the core attributes, characteristics of autism by utilizing

this approach. Nice. When you started it, you had this vision of what it could be. Yes. Has it evolved to be bigger than you thought it would be? And if it has it happened, How did that happen? It has definitely emerged as something significantly larger than what I thought it would be. Like I said, started out as a nonprofit. I was at University of California Davis. When I came to Vanderbilt, it was really embraced, and they really wanted me to continue to include since theater is part of my own program,

which I had always wanted to do anyway. Even though I established it elsewhere, I was given the opportunity to continue to expand it here. I also, through the extremely generous support of the National Institute of Mental Health, I've been able to receive three grants from them to include an initial randomized clinical trial pilot project, then a multi-site randomized clinical trial, and then another clinical trial for adults. So the program has expanded exponentially in terms of research. In the process, we've learned a lot about what does change in response to this. peer-mediated theater-based approach, some things that don't, but we just continue to better understand it. And at this point, we've literally given it the program to hundreds of youth with autism,

a spectrum disorder, and we've also done it at other sites. When you start something out, you always have what I like to call little bumps in the road, so to speak. Sure. Some things just do not go as first planned. what were some of the first struggles that hit you? Then once you got past those first struggles, what happened then to help it evolve to what it is today?

I would say right from the very beginning, I think people did not take it seriously that theater might be an actual form of intervention or a way in which to really impact the lives of people with autism spectrum disorders and be actually a platform for their own voices. Once I got past that in trying to convince people that this wasn't simply a recreational activity for them. And I was able to show the science and the fundamental principles was why there might be change.

Then people started very embracing it. For example, we know in psychology that peers can really make a significant impact for many of us. It's called peer mediation. And so I thought if we really want individuals with autism to be able to better engage with their peers, then we should include peers in the intervention. This has been down in other contexts, but I made it front and center for a sense theater. So we train what we would characterize as typically developing peers. They could be undergraduate students. They could be high school students, but they have good social communication skills.

Some of them do have a theater background. but they're paired one-on-one with a participant who has autism in the program. So that's what key component. Another key component is actually utilizing theater and looking at it as a form of interventions. For example, improvisation allows us to think more flexibly. We know that individuals with autism have sometimes difficulty, thinking more flexibility intend to be a little more concrete. So that's an example of a way that we can embrace something that we think of as part of a recreational or artistic activity and utilize it as a part of an intervention.

So that's just one example. It was convincing others in the way in which we presented it that this could be a way to impact individuals' lives and not just provide fun activity for them. Autistic people tend to be very focused. You brought up the fact that sometimes the improv could be of an issue. Have you had any challenges with them doing improv because sometimes that can take them outside of their comfort zone? So have you had any issues with the improv side of it because of that? So, well, improvisation I want to highlight is just one technique that we use.

But to answer your question, an interesting thing happens when you are trying something and maybe you're uncomfortable and everyone around you is also going through the same experience. And their reaction is they're laughing, they're being silly, they're making mistakes. And it becomes that nobody cares. I just forgot my life. Or I just made up something new. And everybody's laughing and supporting me. And this is interesting to quote, not do it right.

and have people reinforce that. I think that's part of it is, again, this collective sense of social reinforcement and realizing that there isn't just one way to do something. After a while, that process sometimes can be infectious. Absolutely. What style of theater are you doing? I mean, there's just so many variables that can be done. Absolutely.

And thank you for asking. So we do work with a script. and I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute, but I used to work with published scripts that people are quite familiar with, but I went back to my roots. We did this for a number of reasons. One, yes, I admit, it's really fun, but for me, but in addition to that, we can choose the topics, we can be flexible in terms of, you know, with our actors, with and without autism, they might come up with really great ideas.

guess what, they're now part of the play. They might have talents, that they might be musicians, and all of a sudden we might have a gorilla who happens to play the violin. Why not? And so being, again, being flexible in the way that we also present the stories can be meaningful. So we do have a script. We also include music. And typically we have about three songs throughout the 45 to 60 minute play. I say it's played with. music because we don't provide as much music as you would normally see in that full-on musical. Music is yet another aspect of the program that I don't need to tell you, Tony, but it really brings out a lot of really meaningful, powerful emotions in people. It's in Beijing, so it can often

help people to want to participate. And obviously, it can be an enhanced and thrilling experience for the audience as well, they also end up participating too a little bit more, I think, in the program because of that element of music. So we have the script, we have some music, we have some improv, but I think one of the other most critical characteristics of the program is everyone is cast in the show. Everyone has a character that they need to develop. And so that also builds perspective taking, also better understanding the self, making decisions about how we're going to walk and talk and engage with others. What is my relationship with this character versus another? These are wonderful ways to practice and learn about social skills without being so obvious. It's a fun way to try to

enhance our experience about other people and ourselves. What age groups are involved in this theater that you're doing now? It depends on the program, but we have gone down as young as seven. For most of our research, though, has been conducted with participants 10 to 16 years of age, so that the youth program. And then we also have had programs for adults, and that ranges in age from 18 to 40 years of age. Oh, that's great. How often do they get together for rehearsals? In general, in the youth program, there are 10 sessions, and they range between three to four hours each session for most of the programs that we've done. It then culminates into a dress rehearsal, as well as two public performances of the play. Oh, that's great.

How many plays have you done to date? Oh, my goodness. So, we, We've been doing this since 2009. I would say that each year, first of I've written approximately about 10 different plays for the program. And each year, well, 2010, we're putting out usually, we have usually at least two a year, sometimes as money is four. So quite a few. How long have you been doing it at Vanderbilt? I've been in Vanderbilt for 14 years. I've been here in 2010, and so it's been run there my clinical research program. Prior to coming here, I ran the FOSITA program for just under two years. What's the reception been? I mean, you started it and had to wait and see, let's see what happens.

Then it started working, started growing. What's the reception been not only from the autistic community, but those outside of the autistic community that would come to see what you're doing? So the reception has been wonderful. The autistic community has embraced it, has been really supportive. The families have been grateful that we have been able to provide a lot of opportunity for their family members. And because we've done it to research, many of them have been able to participate in the program at no cost. In terms of the peers that have participated in the program and have volunteered and provided support, from some of them it's been really transformative in a lot of ways to be able to spend time

with individuals on the spectrum gain a much better understanding not only of the condition but the individuals to be able to meet so many different people and change their perspective but they think autism is and then finally the audience has been I think although we haven't studied it, but I've heard enough comments to believe they've really been impacted as well. I know that we have an audience there that's impressionable. And so I intentionally also write stories that I think are highly relevant. The topics for the plays are about things like belonging and acceptance and trying new things and some having a characteristic or something that's different and am I going to be accepted and those type of things. And these messages,

are delivered through characters that are quite wonderfully unique, indifferent, and it's much more palatable to hear some of these messages when it's delivered by an insect or an animal or some other lovely, entertaining creature. I think that some of those embedded metaphors have been extremely well received by our audience as well. Okay. Now, how do you find the talent to do this? I've been really lucky in that I do have members of my lab who also happen to be very

responsive as talented. We also collaborate with Dr. Leon Lowe, who is involved with the theater department. I've also worked with other theater directors in the past who bring their incredible talent as directors and they direct the plays as inclusive as I've possibly can. For example, our theater director that we've worked with many times is also an adult who is autistic. Our accompanist is an adult also who has autism. I write the songs with a parent who has an adult child with autism. So in many ways, we are trying to, not only with our participants in the program, but hear the voices and honor the perspective of individuals with autism throughout the program on and off the stage.

Is this being planned to go nationwide or maybe even worldwide, if you could? I like your spirit. So we have been able to implement sense there and a couple of sites through our multi-site clinical trial in the country. But I think we've now done so many studies to show its efficacy that we've been published in high-impact journals to show there are really some significant changes that can take place for many of our participants. But now we are exploring different ways so that we can make sense data more available to people in other states, potentially other countries, who would like to adopt. this model. Nice. Now, we've covered a lot of things that are extremely good. Yeah. Autistic people are known, unfortunately, for some of their meltdowns. Sure. When they're put in a situation like this,

does it lead to anxiety or sensory overload to where they might be worried about their performance or any possible mistakes they might make? How do you get past that? so that they understand that it doesn't really matter. They're doing it for the fun of it and just get out there and enjoy what you're doing. Well, first I will address this idea of performance. In another area of my research in my lab, you study stress. As part of that, we expose individuals to different types of what we will call social paradigms. One of them is well-established.

It's called the true social stress test. And what it requires is for someone to perform either telling a story or participating in a job interview or some of these kind of situations in front of raiders. And these raters have neutral facial expressions and they are evaluating the person who's getting up and performing for them. For many of us, not having a positive affirmation of you're doing a good job or small, smiling and that sort of thing. And seeing this flat affect can be incredibly stressful. It also consists of performing a math subtraction test that if you get it wrong, you have to start a remarkably stressful for most of us because we don't want to be socially evaluated.

We'll cross a number of different studies that we've published. We have found that many individuals in the operas deathen do not find such situations to be stressful. this idea of social evaluation and that kind of threat does not be as concerning. In Sense Theater, we have found for many of our participants the same thing, Tony. It's so interesting because many of them, they long been on this stage. They want to perform. It's interesting that in contrast to a lot of those, it's not as stressful as one right imagine. But the other aspect that you mentioned in terms of the novelty factor, the new experience

of walking into meeting people you've never met and doing things we haven't done and wearing clothes that might be uncomfortable in the form of a costume, those things we do need to shape, meaning gradually introduce them for some of our participants, take things slowly, if them breaks, and also let them participate in a decision. For example, what kind of custom do you want to wear? What do you have at home in your own closet you can bring to be part of your custom? And they help also pick out other pieces that we might want to get for their character. That can help. But getting past that first day, if we can do that, we tell parents that we can just get through day one, we're going to be fine.

So we try to plan on day one pretty carefully. Okay. Now, in any play, you've got different ages, you've got males, you've got females, all interacting with each other on the stage. Autistic people are fairly well known for a lot of things will go past them. For example, flirting, that type of thing. So when you have a situation where they have to take and make a certain body, movement or interact in a certain way, how do you get that across to them so that it gets

across to the audience so they understand exactly what's going on within the play? To share a couple of different things that we do. So we set out our backthums with joke time. Every week, the ones for Debbie 1 to bring in a joke and that they will perform and we, of course, support them in lap even if it's not funny. They have to be clean. They're G-rated. But part of just doing that kind of gets over our fear of having people laugh, which some people think at us, but it's really with us.

Also, by the ability to learn how to tell joke, that can really help. Also going back to, well, we mentioned before in terms of improvisation. So we do the match of size is there and there's a lot of theater games, which kind of loosen everybody else. We get silly and do things that everyday life is not allowed. And so that can also help us to become more flexible, not only what we're saying and approaching things, but also with our bodies and how we might use them to, again, bring out humor or different reactions than other people. Yeah. Now, we've covered a lot of great things. I think one of the most important things here is you're putting together a group of autistic people that are creating this body of work, as everyone knows,

you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. What can you tell us about how they've interacted with each other, what they've learned from each other? I think the most important thing is what have you learned from it, what have you gained from it yourself? I think that theater is an ideal environment in which to welcome so many different voices, points of view. and ways to express ourselves. We have illustrated that through the programs, but we also continue to learn. For example, we just did a program

that was for individuals with autism and intellectual disability. And so they also not only had their voices heard, but their performance was so well received to buy an audience, including some of their people, parents that marveled at what their children were able to do. So I think the theater naturally provides a beautiful platform for us to embrace art. We can include aspects of science, but it really does welcome people with all abilities

and points of view to be able to share their perspective through the telling of a story and being able to, in the process, generally learn about others, but also ourselves. And I think that unfolds naturally in the theater, but also the audience is a vital part of this intervention as well because it's a given take. And that also that relationship, which is how we embrace the autism community by being on the stage and they get off the stage and how we now see them different. is actually a platform for their own voices. Yeah, so in closing,

have I missed anything that you would like to tell us that you think is important for the listeners to hear about your theater? In terms of the program, we've been able to provide SENS Theater as a form of interventions through the generous support of research funding. We now are transitioning

and exploring different business models and seeking a business partners who can also help build that program to make it more accessible, still affordable for members of the community, but in ways that we maintain the integrity of the program that we've done through research, but at the same time, expand our accessibility

so that people in other parts of the country and potentially then the world would be able to access Sense Theater for their autistic community. How do people find you and how do they contact you? Two different sites for your listeners. If you'd like to learn more about Sense Theater, it's for a non-profit, the address is Senstheater.com, which is all lowercase, S-E-N-S-E-T-H-E-A-T-R-E dot com.

And then for more information about SENS Theater, as well as our research that we're doing, you can find out more information on our website at Senslap. V-K-C-Sites.org. I'll spell it. S-E-N-T-N. S-E-L-A-B-D-Z-K-C-S-I-T-E-S dot org. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

This has been a very good conversation, great information. I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much, Tony. It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story,

send them to tonymentor.com. Contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask, tell everyone, everywhere, about why not me, the world. The conversations we're having, And the inspiration our guests give to everyone, everywhere, that you are not alone in this world.