A research team at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), working with the Hospital Sant Pau in Barcelona, has shown that theater can improve the emotional well-being of people with Parkinson’s disease. The study, “Efficacy of a theater-based intervention in patients with Parkinson’s disease” (2025), which has been published in open access in the journal Arts & Health, has provided the first evaluation of the combined effects of active and passive participation in theater activities on these patients’ emotional and cognitive health and quality of life. The researchers were also supported by the Teatre Lliure.
The project involved 34 people with Parkinson’s disease aged between 50 and 75 years old, who were divided into two groups: one attended a three-month theater programme at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona which included performances, practical workshops and a guided tour; the other group did cognitive stimulation exercises at home. Both groups were assessed before and after the programme, using validated neuropsychological tests and questionnaires on their mood, quality of life and perception of change.
On the emotional level, the results are conclusive. The patients who participated in the theater project experienced an improvement in their emotional well-being, as measured using the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire for quality of life (PDQ-39). This improvement was not observed in the group that performed cognitive stimulation exercises at home. In addition, the members of both the theater group and the cognitive stimulation group had lower levels of depression and anxiety, which suggests both activities contribute to improved mood states, albeit in different ways.
The most immediate impact was evident in the participants who attended the group theater workshops: according to the scales administered before and after each session, the emotional burden fell significantly after each workshop, highlighting the value of theater as a tool for channelling emotions.
The research findings show that “group activities can help reduce feelings of isolation, foster emotional connections among participants, and increase empathy by recognizing that others share similar experiences in facing the challenges of the disease.” Likewise, “most reported that working as a group enhanced their sense of social support as patients”.
Workshops for working on emotional expression and body awareness
The theater programme consisted of five performances accompanied by preparatory sessions, and five workshops led by performing arts professionals. The workshops addressed physical and emotional issues by means of group dynamics, exploration of the body and space, improvisation, and collective storytelling. According to the researchers, the emotional impact is explained by two key factors: the explicit emotional expression that theater requires, and the group setting, which reinforces empathy and a feeling of belonging.
The workshops, which were all led by theater professionals, included specific activities such as physical warm-ups, exploration of space and stage presence, emotion-based exercises, group storytelling and improvisation. This combination of techniques aimed to enhance emotional expression and body awareness, which are factors that the study associates with the benefits observed in the patients’ well-being. The cognitive and emotional tools used to measure the programme’s impact were the Spanish versions of clinically validated questionnaires and tests with normative data for the local population, which guarantees the reliability of the results.
Although no significant improvements were observed in the objective cognitive tests, an improvement was recorded in the subjective perception of daily cognitive ability. This subjective improvement can lead to greater confidence when performing everyday tasks. The feedback from the participants was also overwhelmingly positive: the theater workshops obtained an average score of 4.5 out of 5; the theater performances scored 4.4, and the guided tour of the theater scored 4.8.
The article was authored by Marco Calabria and Francesco Ciongoli, members of the Faculty of Health Sciences and researchers in the Neuro ADaS Lab group, affiliated to the UOC’s Research Unit on Digital Health, Health and Well-being, and Salvador Macip, a researcher in the epi4health group, alongside Carmen García-Sánchez, Berta Pascual Sedano and Jaume Kulisevsky, from the Movement Disorders Unit at Barcelona’s Hospital de Sant Pau; Caterina del Mar Bonnin, from the Sant Pau Biomedical Research Institute; and Teresa Fèrriz Roure, an independent consultant working in Barcelona. The projected was supported by the Teatre Lliure and received funding from “la Caixa” Foundation and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
This clinical study provides new evidence on the health benefits of the arts for people with Parkinson’s. Only two prior studies had examined the use of theater in people with Parkinson’s, and showed promising but unreplicated results. This new study applies a rigorous methodology and sets out clear lines for future research: increasing the duration of the programme, including more ecological measures of cognition, which assess how people function in their daily lives, and studying the underlying mechanisms of these benefits in depth. In short, it proposes improving assessment methods to capture subtle changes in cognition.
According to the article, art-based activities, and theatrical ones in particular, are a promising tool alongside medication, which has limited effects with symptoms such as apathy, anhedonia and emotional isolation. The research follows the guideline established by the World Health Organization (WHO), which has recommended the arts as a “social prescription” to improve health and well-being since 2019.
Around 10,000 people in Spain are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease every year, making it the most common neurodegenerative motor disorder. According to the Spanish Neurology Society, this figure will increase in the coming years as the number of patients doubles from its current levels of between 120,000 and 150,000 in Spain alone. Understanding the keys to improving patients’ quality of life is, then, an important challenge for the scientific community.
Calabria, M., et al. (2025). Efficacy of a theatre-based intervention in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Arts & Health. doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2025.2488361.
