Onstage, he is self-assured Stan. Clad in the uniform of an airline pilot, he gazes past the audience to the far beyond, sharing his vision of soaring through the skies. "I've always wanted to fly around the world," he explains. In the world of imagination, he is a man hoping to make a dream come true.

Offstage, he is soft-spoken Richard, with eye contact that wanders as he speaks. It's not easy being on that stage, he admits, "but it's an uplifting experience." In the real world, he is a patient at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital, trying to get well.

He and a dozen other patient-actors appeared this summer in a play they penned through the Imagination Workshop, a program of "poetic theater" that endeavors to draw them out of the isolation of their illness and help them forge a healthy sense of self.

Imagination Workshop is the brainstorm of actress Margaret Ladd, who, with her husband, writer/director Lyle Kessler, founded the program in New York three decades ago and brought it to Los Angeles in 1979. The idea arose, Ladd said, after watching psychiatric patients perform in a play.

"It was extraordinary," she recalled. "It was as if these people had been dead from an emotional, affective point of view. But there they were, on stage, and they were alive."

Through theatrical exercises, participants create characters and develop drama in the language of metaphor. Professional actors, writers and directors lead the workshop sessions, which are offered to patients as a treatment option several times a week at the hospital.

Familiar fairytales often get things moving. At one recent session, a young woman who played Dorothy of "The Wizard of Oz" teamed up with another playing Red Riding Hood's grandmother; both improvised their way out of the infamous funnel cloud over Kansas. "I'm frightened!" exclaimed Dorothy.

"Their character becomes a metaphor into which they put their own feelings," Ladd explained, as in a child's game of make-believe. "The patients know it's not real. The pressure of fixing the self - and of having others focus on fixing them - is off. They have permission to change anything they need to change to make things right again."

It's a transforming experience. Frequently, hospital staff will comment: "I have never seen this patient laugh (or sometimes even speak) before."

"People with schizophrenia or other illnesses don't know how to relate," Ladd said. "They feel lost. Here, they can play around with it and not take it too seriously. And then, all of a sudden, it dawns on them ... 'Wait a minute, I am relating! How can this be?' They're really kind of shocked."

Added Neuropsychiatric Institute Director Peter C. Whybrow: "Imagination Workshop enables them to re-create the story of their life. To see the individual be able to behave again like the person they want to be is nothing short of remarkable."

The results even surprise patients, like Richard. "I don't know how I came up with that," he said of his portrayal of the airline pilot.

But his sister, later standing in the lobby beside him, understood.

"He doesn't remember," she said, "but as a kid, he talked about it all the time. As a boy, Rick always wanted to fly."