Social skills and Asperger’s syndrome

Thanks to the support of Swiss Solidarity, since October 2018, the Accademia Teatro Dimitri, has been able to launch the applied research project “Social Skills and Asperger’s Syndrome: “Work we can” in close cooperation with the ARES Foundation (Fondazione Autismo Risorse e Sviluppo).

This project aims to enable young adults with Asperger’s Syndrome to improve their communication and social skills in order to benefit from them in their work context or in their professional integration.

The project is coordinated on the one hand by Prof. Demis Quadri, head of the research department of the Academy, together with the trainer Shahaf Michaeli, a graduate actress of the Academy, and on the other hand by ARES pedagogues Christian Fischer and Francesca Gerosa, experts in Asperger Syndrome.

Through the means provided by the theatre and the skills provided by the ARES experts, the project aims to enable young adults with Asperger’s Syndrome to improve their communication and social skills, so that they can benefit in particular in their work context or in their professional integration path.

Asperger’s Syndrome is a disorder that involves in particular important difficulties in social interaction and unusual patterns of behaviour.

The theatre, promoted at the Accademia Teatro Dimitri, focuses on the dimensions of relationships, physical awareness and mastery of movement. Much of what we communicate does not pass through the content of words, but through the use of body and voice: through the use of exercises from the training of the actor and in an environment protected from fear of judgement, theatre therefore allows people with Asperger’s Syndrome to appropriate social skills not only on a conceptual level, but also in the physical concreteness and complexity that characterises interpersonal relationships in real life, where it is also necessary to take into account the point of view of the other.