Marian “Billy” Lindkvist, who has died aged 97, was a pioneer in the use of drama and movement in therapy. The method she created, known as the Sesame approach, involves the use of touch, story enactment, improvisation and non-verbal communication to help people with various cognitive and mental health conditions.
Developed by Billy in the 1960s in conjunction with sympathetic actors and health professionals, Sesame acquired its own institute in 1971, responsible over the years for training hundreds of people in its disciplines, which have been successfully taken into hospitals, day centres and community settings. Billy was for many years director of the Sesame Institute in London, as well as a teacher on its course, which evolved into the MA in drama and movement therapy currently taught at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Billy was born in Cardiff to John Gaskell, a solicitor, and his wife Rita (nee Gaskell – she was his cousin), both of whom were directors of the Red Cross in Glamorgan. After a Catholic boarding school in Newport, she spent a year in France teaching English.
She had two children from a brief early marriage, and the story of Sesame began when Billy was looking for ways to help her older daughter, Helen, who was diagnosed in the 1960s with autism. Little was known about the condition at the time, and Billy was convinced that her child needed something different from the treatment she was getting.
While working in advertising in London and struggling to help Helen, Billy found solace and inspiration in a drama group based at City Lit, an adult education college in Covent Garden. She played Tituba in The Crucible and Polly Garter in Under Milk Wood, and found that being involved in the stories and characters not only occupied her mind, but helped her to keep going. Then one night in 1964 she had a dream about some actors coming into a hospital and interacting with the patients. In contrast to the dreary wards where she had spent a lot of time with her daughter, the place came alive. When she awoke she decided to make the dream a reality.
Billy’s singlemindedness inspired fellow actors and directors to get involved. With Ursula Nichol, her director at the City Lit, she formed a mime and movement troupe called the Kats, which toured hospitals and day centres and drew members of the audience into its performances. Another small team of actors, directed by Graham Suter, ran workshops for occupational therapists in hospitals, encouraging them to bring drama into their work.
Doctors and psychiatrists were impressed with their patients’ responses and invited Billy to carry out further work in their hospitals. She also began to visit the US and South Africa. At a psychiatric hospital in Cape Town, where she became a regular visitor, some patients taught her a stamping ritual that she brought into her teaching, a strong movement to a drum beat with a feelgood effect that is still enjoyed by therapists and their clients.
In 1971 a galaxy of theatre people launched the Sesame Institute as a charity to support and raise funds for Billy’s work, taking the name from the magic phrase that opens the robbers’ cave in the Ali Baba story, revealing treasure within.
In 1975 the institute began a one-year Sesame course, teaching the use of drama and movement in therapy at Kingsway Princeton college in north London (now Westminster Kingsway college). Billy drew in tutors from three separate disciplines: Peter Slade on child drama, Audrey Wethered on Laban movement analysis (a method of interpreting and documenting human movement) and Molly Tuby, who brought in the psychology of Jung. By the time the course transferred to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 1986, drama and movement therapists were working all over Britain in a wide range of settings, including hospitals, day centres, schools, prisons and homes for elderly people.
Billy taught on the Sesame course for many years, in both studio and clinical settings. I met her when I studied on the course in 1989. In a session for adults with autism I was paired with a man who was prone to fits when he became over-excited, which he did. Calmly directed by Billy, I found myself seated on the ground, rocking the man in my arms while the group sang. Later I reflected that this was unusual behaviour with someone unknown to me an hour before, but it felt fine and the session ended well.
Billy retired in 1994 when she handed over directorship of the Sesame Institute. After that we worked together on a book, Discovering the Self Through Drama and Movement (1996). Billy then brought out her own publication, Bring White Beads When You Call on the Healer (1998).
In the mid 1950s she married Torbjörn Lindkvist, a BBC journalist. He died in 1998. She is survived by her two daughters, Helen and Christine.
• Marian Lindkvist, drama and movement therapist, born 2 June 1919; died 2 February 2017
Marian ‘Billy’ Lindkvist obituary
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