PUT IT ON STAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 15, 18 January 1940, Page 14

PUT IT ON STAGE.

CHILD CHARACTER. ' f LESSONS THROUGH DRAMA. HOW TO COMBAT INFLUENCES. (By CLARK TREE MAJOR.) NEW YORK. Recently in a suburb near Now York a community long favoured by parents who seek (lio proper environment for their children, tin 1 local movie theatre had to resort to posting this- order: "All children must park guns before entering. Admission hereby is denied anyone who fails f,o comply.*' Inquiry disclosed tliat small hoys and girls had the linliit of shooting, whenover the G-men or gunmen went into pistol action on the screen, directly from the nudicnce. Appeals from the manager the young gunmen yelled down, disrupting completely the performance, not to mention shocking the nerves of the audience.

If this act of young rowdyism—l almost said hoodlumism—can happen in a community noted the country over for its progressive public schools, where can an answer he found? Parents in that community should lie opposed to war and to toy guns and any other miniature implements of warfare. The blame, moreover, cannot lie laid to the movies alone. The selection of the Saturday morning movies in that community is partly controlled hy an advisory council of fathers and mothers.

I am telling the story here because it sharply focuses attention upon the undesirable, or, at best, questionable influences which beat in upon even the most, carefully reared boy or girl of today. The most model father and mother" is almost powerless to prevent it.. No head-sliaking ovqr the dear old days when Dad and Mother's rule with tongue and rod was supreme is going to bring back the old era of discipline. Lectures are not merely dreary, as they were in our day. To-day, lectures have a thousand and one competitors unknown to our generation. The movies, the radio, the modern tempo of speed nnd other stimuli of exritement and distraction. Guns and gunfire gave these young girls and boys excitement at a high and unhealthy pitch, so bang away they did. Nothing else appealed to their imagination to the same degree. Questions /to Parenta. Wherein then lies the answer? Years ugo, when I began my search for a new appeal to children, I was still a pioneer, nn experimentalist. Now, having studied children and their reactions the country over in communities large and small, and worked with parents and teachers and Hoards of Education on new approaches to the child's mind, I feel perhaps 1 have an answer. So to tlmt community concerned about its gun-mad youngsters, I would put this question: What are you doing to dramatise ethics and the basic fine characteristics of life lor your children? G-men, gunmen, gangsters have been so successfully dramatised to your child thnt they are part of his or her daily l>lay. The radio emphasises sex conflict ii nd conflict and distrust between nations as well as people. Not the i J i'css alone, but our easy-going public opinion is responsible for the dramatisa'inn -of this notorious person or that, making their exploits common knowledge, to all children, displacing heroes vorthy of their imagination. Yet, both 'lie movies and the radio have vast educational possibilities—we would not mb any child of thia power to enlarge their horizon. Drama is the abort-cut to the mind. Wherever we turn, we are confronted with dramatised appeal, on the printed page, over the radio or on the stage or screen. So why not to children's minds? Dramatise what you want to ret across to your child. On every side 'here is the competition of dramatised lure to the plastic mind of a youngster. Why keep on with the methods that creak by comparison? Ithica From Playa.

Briefly, this is the educational philosophy underlying my whole >Clare Tree Major Children'* Theatre and our production of ptaya for children. The gaily painted trucks and cars of our six travelling tronpes are known to the small boy* and girls of countless towns the country over as "cargoes of happiness." Out of these magic vehicles come scenery, costumes, cast and, presto! Peter Pan, Aladdin; Cinderella, Hans Brinker, or some other beloved character comes to life then and there in the flesh. Into each play goes all the professional skill and technique of the legitimate theatre. A thing short of the best in production is unworthy of a child. Each production must mean supreme entertainment for the child's own point of view— enchanting, absorbing! Unless it reaches this level, no play is given cargo apace. "How can a play for children be used in character-building?" I hear someone ask: "If a ehild is having the time of his life, how can he be expected to take time out for learning ethics ?" Let me tell a story. It comes from Jane Addams' famous -autobiography. Asked if a person should iot try to be "a good influradjj^i'Ja. the world, the famous social. utefker-head of Hull House was emphlltTc In Ijer advice. "Go out and live {Constructively. Then let your influence fall as it will. Being a good influence must come as a by-pro-duct, never as an end in itself." That, in • nutshell, must be true of every play for children if it is to have real educational Value in the realms of i iie mind and spirit. Bather than -offer i child a goody-goody character whom ir? will rightly resent, or propaganda msffuised as a sugar-coated pill, I would withdraw from the Children's Theatre altogether! For the play's lessons in loyalty, brfevery, perseverance, honesty, kindness, initiative, nobility, must be a by -product, not the end itself. Appeals to Imagination. Let's take as illustration one of the pluys most frequently asked for by the small boys and girls themselves—"Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates." The first act introduces the child to a family in fdmost desperate circumstances. Father is ill and mother, daughter and son must work incessantly to keep the home together. In the end, father lias recovered, the family is prosperous and Hans, the son, is apprenticed to a famous surgeon. His little sister is the proud winner of the coveted silver skates. The family future is full of happiness. The small boy in the audience can not fail to see that all this emtio n!>out through tli# fine character of Hans. As he has shared Hans' problems, so he shares his triumph. Unconsciously, he reacts to and relives the flns qualities it took to win the battle. Believe It or not, the children of today in every Motion of the country (and we play rspeatsdly In 38 states) are just|

as ready to accept fine ethics, it skilfully presented, as they are to accept G-men and gunmen. The problem lies N in opening the floodgates of a youngster's imagination and by keeping the youthful characters and their experiences within the realm of any child's understanding. Who of us can forget Dick Wliittington? At a low ebb in his childhood, young Dick sat disconsolate on a curb, hungry, homeless and friendless. Courage and pluck aplenty were required to turn him back to London, where the bells seemed to say, "Turn again, Whittington. Lord Mayor of London." Few small boys in this day, thank heaven, sit on curbs, hungry and homeless! Yet. every day in the week, any email child at school, at home or at play, confronts countless situations and must make decisions that call for all the pluck and courage he sees Dick display on the stage. How to Foater Dramatiaation. A child's powers of imitation are very great, as capable duplicating a hero worthy of his admiration as the gunnian hero. A question frequently asked me by parents and teachers is: "If can nave such character-building value for our boys and girls as we have seen they do from the series cf plays in our town this winter, why couldn't dramatisation be more widely used in the school and at home?" And close upon its heels comes another typical question: "What can I do at home to foster all this for my own children?" Well, any good book worth reading aloud has dramatic material. 'Let your children work out the characters themselves. They can do this by playing out different episodes, either being themselves the actors, or by making cutouts of the characters and moving them about while saying the lines for cardboard actors. Script or plav is not necessary. The important thing is that the characters from the book must live in tiie children's imaginations. It is not so much how will they do it, as that they learn to think in terms of characters and situations beyond their own. If they wish to think out what happendfd to the characters before the book opened or after it closed, this will be all to the good. Children can make their own little theatres out of a laundry or dress box and work out their scenery and action thrpugh these cardboard cut-outa. fifimnltifl a*i A Oamamaa

Encourage your children to tell the story back to you. Encourage your child to ask himself: "How would I feel if I were really that boy or girl? How would I behave toward other people when they say or do this or that?" This is the- initial step of the creative imagination for many a child, taking him for the first time outside hi* own small world. This attitude may also create a desire for more facts about the character or the country or background from which the character come*.

Another -excellent stimulus to both concentration and imagination is to ask the child to describe the room in which the events happen, after you have read the description over once to him. Let him tell you where the fireplace is, where doors and window* are, whether there is a piano or bookshelves. Let him choose the colour* for the room — the curtains, the cushions. All this makes a setting against and through which *he characters move, so that, as the atory evolves, they show themselves in their proper environment and atmosphere to his active imagination. Another advantage is that the child will listen to your advice on diction and good speech, when you tell him how the person he is portraying should speak, with far more attention than ha would apply to tire same correction for his own specch. His imagination will come into the picture and his attitude to your advice will certainly be far more responsive than to a diction lecture. —N.A.N. A.