Stop-Gap to Undertake a Training Institute

Stop-Gap, which has used drama therapy to help thousands cope with teen pregnancy, drug abuse, AIDS and other troubles, is marking its 20th anniversary this year by inaugurating a training institute.

“We certainly want Stop-Gap and the help it provides to outlive us,” said co-founder and executive director Don R. Laffoon, 54. “We believe the institute is the way to do that.”

Stop-Gap’s drama therapists hold weekly sessions in 12 local social service agencies and hospitals to help people handle life-threatening illness, physical abuse, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency and other problems through dramatic skits and role-playing. Its facilitators and actors have also performed such educational plays as “When No Means No,” about date rape, about 1,000 times last year in about 650 elementary, middle and high schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Demand for these programs increases annually, which also prompted the Stop-Gap Institute, whose first classes will be held next month at the nonprofit organization’s 2,700-square-foot office suite here, said co-founder and managing director Victoria Bryan.

“We don’t know if we want to do more than 1,000 school shows a year,” Bryan said during a recent phone interview, “but we do want every child to have access to Stop-Gap plays in their classes.”

Stop-Gap staffers have been training outside therapists and educators for five years, but always by request rather than proactively, Bryan said.

All institute students--including marriage, family and child counselors, social workers and drama therapists--will learn the Stop-Gap method of interactive role-playing, she said. A Rehearsal for Life program will provide educators with training and scripts of Stop-Gap’s 11 school plays to stage productions in their own districts with their own students, rather than relying on Stop-Gap’s 20 actors and nine staffers.

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Laffoon, president of the National Assn. for Drama Therapy, said he is unaware of any drama-therapy institute that also offers such school programs.

Stop-Gap’s overall budget, 95% of which is contributed by corporate and foundation donors, totals about $1 million this year, Bryan said. That includes about $300,000 for the institute, which the organization hopes to support in the future with more earned revenue and fewer donations, she said.

Plans also call for taking the institute national within three to five years. A new law requiring many therapists and social workers to take 36 hours of continuing education every two years may help create demand to bring that about, Bryan said.