Part 2

Recently two young veterans who had just returned from eighteen months’ service with the American army in France were given a dinner by one of their neighbors who wished to celebrate their home-coming. Her six-year-old son, whose grandfather had served in the Civil War, was much excited for some weeks preceding the long-anticipated welcome dinner. On the memorable evening he was dressed in khaki, in imitation of the soldier guests, and wore his grandfather’s sword. The double significance of that evening will probably never be forgotten by this six-year-old, who felt the dignity of his position as grandson of a Civil War veteran and host of two World War heroes.

FOLK DANCING

We sometimes forget that all of us use at least two languages, the language of speech and the language of gesture. The language of gesture is probably as old as the language of speech, but to-day the language of speech has so largely taken the place of the other that except among the more emotional people of southern climes gesture is largely neglected and frequently meaningless.

Folk-dancing is the practiced speech of gesture. By this means, primitive peoples acted out most of the occurrences of the tribe, the ways of various animals, the occupations of men, their wars, their loves, their religion, even the moods of the moment.

There is, of course, the closest relation between music and the dance, and the folk-dances and the music that accompanies them have lived on together. The old ballads were all originally written for choral dancing, so that song and gesture were closely united.

The theory that underlies belief in the educational value of dramatic dancing was stated by Plato, in the days and among the race that saw and knew lives of unexampled attainment and a record in the arts that has not been approached by any other people. He said: “Rhythm and harmony are made familiar to the souls of the youths, that they may grow more gentle and graceful and harmonious, and so be of service both in words and in deeds; for the whole life of man stands in need of grace and of harmony.”

There is no apparent boundary line between singing games, rhythmic games, and folk-dancing, in its simplest and innocent forms. Such old singing games as London Bridge; Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush; Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow; The Hare in the Hollow; King William; and the Duke and the Castle embody dancing steps, though they are games set to music. The historic minuet is an expression of courtliness, as it was the historic dance of the old courtly days.

Miss Jane Addams and her fellow-workers at Hull House believe that the development of the characteristic national dances of the various countries that are sending us immigrants is going to be, together with their folk songs, a valuable contribution to the refinement of our national life, as well as an important support to the self-respect of these people who, because of the arrogance of Americans, suppose they have everything to learn and nothing to give.

DRAMATIC PARTIES

To the mother who is at her wits’ end in trying to devise something new and good for children’s parties, the idea of using the dramatic instinct should come as a godsend. Nothing could possibly be more delightful than an afternoon of dramatic games, varied by more quiet story-telling. Playing statues, getting up tableaux, performing charades, and even extemporaneously acting out story-plays are all methods of entertainment which win enthusiastic response. To be ready for such an emergency it might be well for mothers to follow the suggestion of Miss Nora A. Smith that “a drawer in the playroom closet be devoted to objects and old finery suitable for tableaux and dramatizations, such as trappings for soldiers, feathered hats, trained skirts, buckled belts, gold lace, and old jewelry.” To add to the delight of such a place, Miss Smith adds, “This closet should be treated in general as a high, exalted place, never to be opened in mother’s absence or without her consent.”

PANTOMIME, TABLEAUX, ETC.

It is a curious fact that that which is the easiest form of dramatic expression to young children is the most difficult to adolescent young people, namely, the pantomime. This is explained by the fact that little children enter so unconsciously into action without the use of words, while the older ones are rendered more self-conscious by being restricted from the use of speech. Of pantomime for little children, the very simplest form is that of “statues,” in which the children pose, either dressed all in white with powdered hair or with no change of costume, to represent scenes from life, familiar people, common trades, form of action, famous people and well defined thoughts or feelings.

The next dramatic step is the tableaux, in which the children are grouped at least in pairs, arranged in a frame or behind a curtain, dressed in costume. Here, as in the statues, their own inventiveness may be largely depended upon, as they pose to represent characters in story-books, characters in poems, scenes from history, people of other lands and famous pictures.

The third variety is the shadow play, in which with even simpler properties but with more careful rehearsal the children pose as silhouettes and employ a few dramatic gestures. In Miss Perry’s When Mother Lets Us Act the details of all these pantomime performances are given quite adequately.

The next step in dramatic performances is story-playing. The easiest kind consists of simple character sketches, in which a child may portray quickly with language as well as gesture such characters as the father, an old witch, a newspaper boy, a school teacher. Animals may also be imitated. Miss Perry describes a lovely acting game, which she calls Playing Garlands.

“Garlands,” as she describes it, “is a little group of plays acted one after the other, all a part of the same idea and each one acted by one child only. When grandmother comes, you can have the garland of greetings. Encircle grandmother, hand in hand. Then let each child represent something that is glad to welcome grandmother. One represents the chickens and struts and flutters, one represents the flowers--this one spreads her skirts and acts like a flower; and so on. A garland of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems, each child taking one poem and speaking, or singing, and acting it, is charming.”

Doctor Gesell describes the way this activity develops in the elementary schoolroom: “Very soon the class will not be content with one player. The boy who is trying to represent the monkey will suggest that he have a hand-organ man; the hen will want chickens, and the scene will go naturally and easily without dictation. It is interesting to see how the children grow in power of representation and suggestion, and how naturally language begins to be the necessary accompaniment of gesture. The language of the children will be pictorial and full of unexpected terms and phrases. At this stage of the work it will be found helpful to put a screen between the player and the class. Such a device adds a little mystery to the play. The effect that such work may have upon voice culture is most significant.”

The next step will be stories with simple plot. In performing these it is not necessary to memorize, and it is undesirable to do so. Miss Fry in her Educational Dramatics describes in a vivid way how a story-play evolves. Here is a bit of her monologue, in which we can easily imagine the interruptions of the children. The play is a variant of the Cinderella story:

“Good! Let’s begin with the Market-Place! And the crowd is there, as the story says. What will the crowd be doing? Buying and selling, and walking about and gossiping, as crowds always do anywhere! Yes! We can have chairs about, to be the shops, and Cicily will be in the crowd, of course, shabby and shy, because she is poor, and no one notices her. O, no! Not unhappy, because she is a merry creature, even if she is poor! Barefoot? I s’pose so! Rags? O, let’s plan the whole story first and what they _do_, and then think about clothes and other things, or we _never_ shall be through and doing it!

“Now what happens? The Bellman’s bell can sound outside the Square just as in the story, and we can hear him calling, ‘O, Ye’s! O, Ye’s!’ and the bell _really_ ringing. _Then_ what will happen? The Bellman will march in, yes! Ringing and calling, all the people of the place will ‘come running,’ as the story says. What a lot more fun it will be to be _doing_ it than just hearing about it! O, yes! of _course_ they chatter at him. The story does not say _that_, but any one would know it.”

Mrs. Braucher recommends for story-playing the following stories, some of which lend themselves to a more permanent form of acting:

Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Hansel and Gretel. Jack and the Beanstalk. Snow-white. Elves and Shoemaker. Eleven Wild Swans. Red Shoes. The Cat and the Parrot. The Golden Goose. King Arthur and Excalibur. The Hole in the Dike.

We come now to the performing of memorized plays by adolescent young people. Before adolescence memorizing is of little value in dramatic performance, unless it be of poems to be acted, because it tends to hamper the freedom of original speech and action. Here Frederica Beard’s sensible statement is memorable: “The dramatic instinct is not utilized primarily by the seeing of plays, but by self-expression in the acting out of plays suitable to a particular age.” It is the children who have been surfeited by the drama and the moving-picture show who regard dramatic play as tiresome. Those who are leading in the Junior Drama League, instead of encouraging theater-going among children, are strongest in their insistence that _children ought to be kept from the playhouses_. Neither is it believed that the development of dramatic expression among children is likely to increase the number of young who go into that profession.

Development through patient drill of some capacity in the taking of parts, on the other hand, tends to help a child to discriminate between good and poor acting, and to appreciate all his life that which is truly fine in this great and ancient art. But the greatest difference between the spirit of the mother or teacher who coaches some young people in their amateur plays and the teacher of dramatic art is that the latter works almost entirely to specialize the actor for his business and art of acting, while the leader of amateurs is concerned chiefly with the results of the acting in developing the characters of the children through this exercise of the dramatic instinct.

Something more than the dramatic instinct may be exercised through these amateur home plays. One writer describes how once he started out with a group of young folks to give a pantomime of Hiawatha. The boys were to do the acting while he read part of the poem aloud. This seemed to be such an easy thing to do that they had not planned to have the preparations last more than a month, but they took all winter. The boys got so interested in making the costumes and painting the scenery that they worked enthusiastically week after week in doing so. They made their costumes out of brown cambric or denim, which was easily fringed. Their moccasins were made of the same material, and beads were liberally used on the moccasins and the bracelets. “Scalps” were made of old switches of false hair, and the blades of the tomahawks were very realistic with red paint. They secured old Christmas trees from the public gardens, they set up a tent of their own devising, they had a camp fire, lighted by red electric bulbs, they had scenery of their own painting and they even had a moon of their own which rose more or less spasmodically.

When the boys put on their warpaint and performed their dance, to an Indian chant of their own invention, under red fire, they were positively gruesome, and the dramatic climax of Hiawatha’s wedding was glorious in the extreme. Evidently, in these exercises it was not the dramatic instinct alone that counted, though that was central throughout, but the gang spirit was behind it all, and the handicraft instinct became involved, while music, art and the love of literature all found their place.

Miss Cora Mel Patten, who has had a varied experience in coaching young people in connection with the playgrounds and social centers of Chicago, advises that for the best results the leader should deal only with small groups. She believes that intensive work carried on patiently and for a long time with a moderate-sized dramatic club is more effective than the ambitious endeavor to deal with a large company. As in all social work that amounts to anything, it seems better to get somewhere with a few than merely to start with the many. In the small group the mob spirit is entirely absent, and if it be a selected company, everybody is in earnest. These statements suggest that the pageant, which is becoming so popular, is worth while for its patriotic and inspirational rather than its dramatic opportunities.

DRAMATIZED WORK

The chief difference between work and play to a child seems to be that in work a definite creative result is kept in mind, so that the _end_, rather than the means, is the central purpose. In play the _means_ is everything and the end is a matter of indifference. Until the child is old enough to become something of a creator and inventor he does not instinctively perform much work. Sometimes before that period arrives, however, it is possible to interest him in profitable tasks if he can engage in them with his imagination; and all through childhood, and, indeed, all through life, imagination is the Shekinah that leads the host of toil through its wilderness toward the promised land.

A pleasant device to encourage young children to work is to denominate them as “soldiers,” “watchmen,” or “little partners.” The addition of a _paper cap_ or a _wooden sword_ or a _policeman’s club_ will carry many a small youngster through a task which would otherwise seem intolerable. One mother has strengthened her family discipline by assigning each of her children in turn to be “the captain of the day,” giving each in turn special privileges and the responsibility of keeping the other children in order. If a boy or girl can only turn something into something else more to his liking, he will develop considerable industry. If the woodpile and the dishpan can be utilized as enemies to be destroyed and the untidy room as a province to conquer, these tasks are fulfilled with a complete, though furious, equanimity.

In one home where there were many humdrum tasks to be performed by the children the oldest won the enthusiasm of the rest by printing the names of all the tasks upon slips of paper and letting each draw lots. The uncertainty of the lot and the chance to relieve the tedium by entering for a time into the work of another changed the aspect of the whole situation.

The idea of partnership may be profitably employed all through childhood. The writer remembers an investment in hens in which the drudgery was completely lightened by the fact that he entered into equal partnership with his father, which involved the keeping of a leather-bound account book and the rendering of weekly balance sheets. It seems probable that during the years of youth, when imagination no longer disguises the task, the growing boy or girl meets it with complaisance and success because he still thinks of himself as a skilled craftsman who has pride in doing his work well.

HOME DISCIPLINE THROUGH THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT

What has just been said indicates some possibilities which may be worked out in the direction of governing children through the playful use of this instinct. Sully reports this: “‘When R. is naughty and in a passion’ (writes a lady friend of her child, aged three and a half) ‘I need only suggest to him that he is some one else--say, a friend of his--and he will take it up at once. He will pretend to be the other child, and at last go and call himself, now a good boy, back again.’ This mode of suggestion, by helping the ‘higher self’ to detach itself from and control the lower might, one suspects, be much more widely employed in the moral training of children.”

One mother, when her little boy sulked upon being requested to do some little thing for her, would pretend to telephone for a messenger boy with certain characteristics which were not much in evidence in her own son at the time, explaining that her little son, who usually ran errands for her, was not at home to-day. The latter, in his interest in the “game,” would immediately forget to sulk, knock politely at the door of his mother’s room, and upon being invited to enter, present himself as the messenger boy for whom she had telephoned. When asked how long he could stay, he would reply “All day if you wish,” and in the role of messenger boy, he cheerfully performed his mother’s errands.

When her sister’s little children seemed averse to washing their hands and faces in preparation for dinner, Mrs. Chenery tells of how their mother made this duty, so disagreeable to all children, really pleasurable through the use of military commands which always appealed to them.

“Attention! Forward march! one, two, one, two. Right face--to the bathroom, march!”

Then, after their hands and faces were shining and their tangled curls combed out, “Attention! Left face! Forward march!”--downstairs, through the hall, then once more, “Left face--to the dining-room--march!”

Not only does imagination help a child cheerily to obey, but it helps an adult wisely to command. Throughout childhood and youth can there be a better maxim for government than that which is the very heart of the imaginative instinct: put yourself in the child’s place?

CLUBS BASED ON IMAGINATIVE PLAY

Some of the most successful clubs for boys and girls are those in which every activity is made a part of a play-world, in which the members live during, and, to some extent, between, the sessions of the club. In the Boy Scouts, for example, the lad thinks of himself as a pioneer and enacts through a skillful variety of exercises many of the resourceful habits of the early explorers. The imaginative element is conspicuous also in Mr. Thompson-Seton’s organization, The Wood-Craft Indians. The program of the Camp Fire Girls likewise makes a strong appeal to the imaginative and the play spirit.

In the Order of the Knights of King Arthur the boys pretend that they are members of the ancient Round Table; they bear the names of knights and heroes; they carry their initiates from one rank to another; they engage in quests and tournaments, and the influence upon an individual is distinctly in the direction of absorbing ideals of chivalric manhood. In a sister organization, The Queens of Avalon, the girls think of themselves as the queens who in the King Arthur legend dwelt upon the magic isle of Avalon for the healing of mankind.

In an organization for younger boys, called The Brotherhood of David, lads between eight and twelve regard themselves as future kings, in exile, dwelling, like David, in caves and fields and preparing for sovereignty. The Wolf Cubs--an English organization for pre-adolescent boys--holds before its members the ideal of a pack of wolves.

DRAMATIC SELF-GOVERNMENT

This idea was carried still further in self-governing communities of boys and girls, such as the George Junior Republic. In these villages for delinquent children and orphans the young people all the time realize a civic situation through officials elected by themselves, by legislative enactments which they passed and amended, through a complete financial and commercial system, by which, under as few restrictions as possible, they solved the problems of the state and of individual prosperity. A similar method has been worked out in the “school city” in some of our public schools.

DRAMATICS IN THE CHURCH

In all Christian worship the dramatic element survives. It finds its most elaborate expression in the Roman Catholic mass, but even the simple order of service in the church of Puritan lineage has certain dramatic elements. The sacraments of baptism and of the Lord’s Supper in those communions are intensely impressive to children simply because of their dramatic elements.

In liturgical churches, where the entrance of the clergy and the choristers in processional is followed by a variety of consecutive and historic ceremonies, performed by rising, sitting, kneeling and going to the altar in turn, and concluding with the recessional of the celebrants, children who have been trained in churchly ways find a keen and lifelong delight. Surely, nothing but the dramatic character of such services can explain the joy which little children take in going to church where the sermon and much of the service are incomprehensible.

The festival, even more than the ordinary service of worship, makes its dramatic appeal to children. No one could have been present in an Italian city on some high feast day, when the main street of the village was decorated for the great procession, when all the treasures of the church were exposed to view, and when the band, the crowd of venders, the best clothes of everybody, and, most of all, the dramatic services themselves, both in the church and on the street, were heightening the impression, without realizing that here is the secret of much of the power of the church in the lives of these imaginative people. To be in such a village at Christmas time and to go into the lighted church and see before the high altar the Christmas crèche, with its cardboard scenery and its toy images of Joseph, Mary, and the Christ-child, the shepherds and the Wise Men, thronged, as it is, with wide-eyed children, is to appreciate the wisdom of the Roman Church in visualizing for the children the drama of the incarnation.

Those who have been brought up in a colder atmosphere can hardly fail to remember the thrill which they felt when they witnessed or participated as children in the dialogues, exercises, and choruses of Sunday school concerts. There has been of late the beginning of a revival, even in Protestant churches, of the miracle play, in which boys as well as girls have been delighted to take part, and in which the spiritual impression of the enacting of Scripture stories without scenery has been profound upon both actors and audience.

The religious pageant, as well, with its simple yet suggestive scenery, and its appropriate music, lights the imagination of the children and young people until they themselves live through, in a measure, the experiences of those staunch men and women who lived centuries ago in the Holy Land. By making these Bible characters seem real human beings, who thought and acted much as we do to-day, we help to make them a real power to shape character in the lives of our boys and girls. The program of the church needs to consider more fully the power of appeal through the dramatic and imaginative instincts of its youth.

SUMMARY

The home may develop the dramatic instinct by encouraging dramatic play and games. Some of the most inexpensive and accessible homemade playthings are the most valuable for dramatic purposes.

Through serial and cooperative dramatic play, the parent enters into and retains the pleasantest kind of fellowship with his children. There is excellent opportunity to employ this kind of play in story-telling and at the family festivals.

Folk-dancing is a form of dramatic play which, historically, has been of great importance and is to-day most valuable in stimulating artistic capacity and making the child bodily and spiritually graceful and harmonious.

Parents will find their best resource for children’s parties in inviting all those present to exercise the dramatic instinct.