it clear who the characters were and what they were doing, commended interesting and natural action, and suggested ways to make it still better. Another day the class played Miss Pim, the milliner, and the mountain-climbing scene. They talked about the home scene but did not play it even though it was the part of the poem out of which they could have made a complete story.

High school and adult groups like to choose their favorite scenes, divide into groups of about five, and, after ten minutes of planning their chosen episodes separately, come back and play them for each other. They never fail to have fun and excitement in working out their scenes. Few of them would have believed they could feel so free and have such a delightful time with a child's poem.

Creative Plays in Other Subject Areas

The most valuable experience which many fifth and sixth grades have all year may be a creative play as the center of a unified study in all school subjects. This is no small achievement. It extends over a period of several months, and its culmination is often the climax of the year's work.

The learning that comes out of such an experience in interrelationship is incalculable. The result is not just another play, nor is it simply a triumph in the retention of factual material.

Such a project includes a live audience-usually one performance for the school and one for parents. The latter is a demonstration of the children's work rather than entertainment, although it is invariably entertaining even when too full of the results of the children's research. Because of the thorough work they have done, the players are confident and fluent. If anyone in the audience is unaware that dialog is being improvised, with no written script anywhere, he may easily think from the smoothness of the performance that the play has been written. Only an occasional "Okay" and a slip in grammar shows that it is as genuine as an oriental rug with an imperfection here and there. If the observer realized that only during that afternoon one of the chief characters had come down with the mumps and that another child had stepped into the role without so much as trying on the costume, he would appreciate the resourcefulness and sense of responsibility developed by this kind of creative work.

Source Material for Plays. Many ideas for plays come from the social studies. Whatever country the class is studying at the time the play is being planned may motivate the choice. For one group, interest in medieval England brought about a creative play based

on Adam of the Road, by Elizabeth Janet Gray; for another, studying Africa, a dramatic story about Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt. For others: a Russian folktale, showing the superiority of wit over brute force; a Japanese story contrasting the old and the new ideas in Japan; a Chinese story showing how knowledge outwitted the conceit of the Emperor who commanded that all learned books be burned in order that knowledge might begin with his dynasty.

Plays may also be built around persons who have contributed much to society. It might be Roger Williams, William Penn, or Benjamin Franklin; an artist or musician, or a great modern character, such as Albert Schweitzer.

Other groups may be interested in pioneer stories: the great Northwest, the Gold Rush, the Santa Fe Trail. The Tree in the Trail, by Holling C. Holling, has more than once proved successful.

One of the favorites in a sixth-grade classroom in Illinois, was an Indian play based on a tale about a young Indian boy who came upon a pioneer white lad whose foot had been badly hurt by thorns. After relieving his suffering, the Indian took the white boy to the nearby camp where his father, chief of the tribe, made the injured boy welcome. A feast was given in his honor that night, and the young braves entertained him with tales, told in pantomime, of the exploits of their heroes. Each story was accompanied by tomtoms and rattles played by the rest of the tribe, seated in a circle on the ground. No two of the pantomimes had the same pattern, but all the braves followed exactly the beat of their own distinctive rhythms. Intense eagerness characterized the whole process of work from the day the children began originating Indian rhythms until it was produced for the rest of the school.

Children have a richer experience-judging, organizing, learning about dramatic construction-if they study a complete novel rather than a short story, and their work is more challenging if they select episodes and adapt the narrative to dramatic form. Considerable skill, however, is required on the part of the teacher-guide. This is also true if children create their own story, for it is extremely difficult to originate a plot good enough to present for an audience.

One sixth-grade group, interested like all modern children in space travel, wanted to plan a space play." Of their own volition, they discarded several poorly written, even though exciting, stories: and because they had an unusually gifted dramatic teacher to guide

"Described in Playmaking With Children by Winifred Ward. New York, AppletonCentury-Crofts, Inc. 1957. p. 168.

them, and a classroom teacher who gave them many opportunities for helpful scientific study, they created a charming play. They called it "The Dark Side of the Moon."

Certain regular periods during the week may be set aside for the development of the play, while various kinds of research go on at other times. Sometimes a native of the country being studied is available to talk to the group. There may be a documentary film, a museum collection; and there are always helpful books and pictures. If the play should need songs and dances, the music and physical education teachers are usually willing to help. In art periods the children may design and make costumes and properties. There may be songs or prayers to write. Both the space play and one on the subject of time required scientific charts. When all these activities are spread over several months, the regular school routine is not disrupted in the least until the final week. In the meantime, regular work in the social studies unit may have progressed far beyond that particular aspect of study on which the play is based.

School is unusually interesting and exciting for the children involved in the "big project"; and they become so sure in their conception of what it is all about that they have the confidence of "authorities." Many classroom teachers have testified to the value of such a project in motivating research, in bringing growth in independent thinking, and in helping to socialize children who have been unsocial. It is an adventure, shared by teacher and children, which is usually the most demanding and happiest experience of their school year. What makes it so enjoyable is that at the heart. of it there is a creative art experience the kind of experience which "is as necessary to the health of the spirit as food is to the health of the body."

15

Interrelationship of the Arts

Art experiences in the future will be provided for children more and more often in an integrated context rather than as separate arts. Drama and dance always have been in reality the same art. The essential quality of both is motion. When pantomime fails to make the story clear, then words take over.

Music motivates many experiences children have in creative drama. They often listen to records, such as Danse Macabre, Circus Time, The Little Shepherd. Of a Tailor and a Bear, and pantomime what

15 Applegate, Mauree. Everybody's Business -Our Children. Evanston, Ill., Row Peterson & Co. 1952. p. 205.

the music says to them. The playing out of stories is a strong motivation for art expression; and, in turn, a picture sometimes stirs the children's imagination to create a play. The rhythm of Indian drums may be the starting-point for a stirring dramatization; and when children work together on an integrated project, every art to which they have been exposed-creative writing, music, dance, designing, and painting-converge in the drama which is the meetingplace for all of them.

Improvisation in Junior and Senior
High School

The term "creative dramatics" changes to "improvisation" for young people of high school and college age. Informal drama is used in many high school speech and English courses, and in probably all college acting classes.

In an eighth-grade elective dramatic course in the Evanston, Ill., school system (which has a dramatic department with a supervisor and trained specialists) the students are introduced to the plays of Shakespeare by the dramatizing of episodes from the stories of several of the plays. Using Shakespeare in this way introduces children to the plays in the way they were intended to reach people— by experiencing them on the stage, not in English classes. When young people know the stories of the plays and become acquainted with the characters, they enjoy and profit greatly from playing them in their own words, leaving Shakespeare's difficult language until senior high school.

The teacher reads to students, in Shakespeare's words, the episodes they choose to dramatize. In this way, they may get the flavor of the dialog, and are able to use many phrases from the play. This approach is encouraged by the teacher who wishes above everything else to instill in them a love for great literature.

Some senior high school English teachers use improvisation in Shakespeare and in teaching other dramatic literature. Speech teachers are finding this technique valuable in role-playing for discussion groups, and also in approaching formal plays. Many and varied experiences in improvisation are assigned college acting classes for attaining naturalness in characterization. Some of the best university theater directors consider this technique indispensable in staging plays.

Scout Program in Dramatics.-Creative dramatics is used not only in community recreation programs but it is one of the most vital and popular parts of the Girl Scout program. The 1956 handbook, Dramatics and Ceremonies for Girl Scouts, states that all of their plays should be "creative dramatics." Whether the girls do brief improvisations or full-length plays, they develop them all creatively.

The Boy Scouts also have a drama program, with requirements given in the 1957 Merit Badge Series in Dramatics. These requirements are all in the field of formal dramatics, but it is left to the local communities as to what kind and how much dramatic activity there shall be.

The Teacher's Role

What does the teacher or leader get personally from creative work with children? There should be a reward for the kind of effort it requires to stir creativity of any kind in pupils. Hughes Mearns says that before anything significant can be done in the creative education of youth by adults, "they themselves must first learn to become