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Dramatic playing beyond the theory of multiple intelligences

Faith Gabrielle Guss

To cite this Article Guss, Faith Gabrielle(2005) 'Dramatic playing beyond the theory of multiple intelligences', Research in
Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 10: 1, 43 — 54
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 Research in Drama Education
Vol. 10, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 43
54 /

Dramatic playing beyond the theory of

multiple intelligences
Faith Gabrielle Guss*
Oslo University College, Norway
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Related to aspects of drama and theatre education, I search beyond the findings about symbolic
play set forth by Dr Howard Gardner in Frames of mind . The theory of multiple intelligences . Despite
the inspiration for and solidarity with arts educators that emanate from his theory, I sensed that it
did not provide a full picture of the complex aesthetic and reflective skills manifested by young
children in their playing. I refer to symbolic play as ‘play-drama’, viewing it as autonomous drama
performed in the socio-cultural context of children’s collective playing. The individual child-
orientation in Gardner’s developmental psychology study does not address the child-cultural
dimension. Yet there is much to be learned for arts educators about the significance for the children
of their cultural-aesthetic ways of being together. At the conclusion of the research, I view the
capacity for expert dramatic playing as an executive capacity, a dramatic intelligence, which
coordinates the deployment of the multiple artistic symbols that constitute play-drama. Children’s
skills go beyond what Gardner proposes as interpersonal and intrapersonal. The skills can be
compared with those of a first-draft auteur, who masters the artistic positions and form-languages
of a dramatist, dramaturg, director, actor, dancer/choreographer, storyteller, musician/composer,
scenographer, props person, light designer and sound designer. In their aesthetic social life, play-
ensembles enter and exit the drama-cultural mode on and off throughout the long hours in day-
care.

Introduction
Can an arts-related understanding of children’s autonomous (adult-free) dramatic
playing serve as a foundation for meaningful drama and theatre praxis? This was the
question that led to my doctoral research on the interrelationship between the
aesthetic, reflective and cultural dimensions in dramatic playing (Guss, 2001). My
interest in this area was stimulated by reading Howard Gardner’s seminal book:
Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences (1983). It has had a positive impact
on educational policy-makers because of the strong case it makes for the value of
artistic subjects as viable roads to learning.
However, because of Gardner’s interpretation of the value of symbolic play
(pretend play, dramatic play) as a manifestation of interpersonal and intrapersonal
intelligence, rather than as a manifestation of a dramatic intelligence, drama and

*Oslo University College, Faculty of Education, Pilestredet 48, 0167 Oslo, Norway. Email:
faith.guss@lu.hio.no
ISSN 1356-9783 (print)/ISSN 1470-112X (online)/05/010043-12
# 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/13569780500053155
 44 F. G. Guss

theatre subjects have not received a boost on the educational curriculum in any way
comparable to that of other arts subjects. Because there is still controversy
concerning the relevance of Gardner’s theories for drama and theatre education, I
present in this paper a critical reading of Gardner et al.’s developmental psychology
findings on dramatic play, and give a brief sketch of alternative arts-related
perspectives, analytical tools and findings developed in my research. Several arts-
related concepts are also played with in the flow of the discourse.
In the early stages of my research, I formulated questions related to the potential in
dramatic playing for recognition*in the sense of ‘perceiving clearly’ (in Norwegian:
/
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erkjennelses-potentiale). The ideas stemmed from an interest in Gardner’s and

colleagues1 theory. The evolution of my critical thinking brought me forward to
the alternative theoretical foundations for the study.
Inspired by Gardner’s findings, I had thought of children’s dramatic playing as
‘proto-artistic’, in the sense that it could be considered as an antecedent to artistic
practice. By this I meant that ontogenetically, in the life of a young child, dramatic
play practice could be seen as an embryonic artistic practice which, with training of
skills and technique at a higher age-level, could be developed into artistic practice.
From this perspective, my original working title was ‘The aesthetic dimension in
symbolic play: children’s play as proto-artistic practice’. Below, I provide the
background for my eventual shift of perspective.

Dramatic playing as a symbol system

The term ‘symbolic play’ was utilised in the original working title for the research, but
was later changed to ‘dramatic play’. The original term was used because, at the time,
I was immersed in Gardner’s research into human intelligences. This was based
partly on a seven-year study of children’s use of symbol systems. Symbolic play is one
of the symbol systems which was studied. As a theatre arts educator in tertiary
education, the findings were of great interest, both because Project Zero’s research
was heralded by arts educators in other fields as a long-awaited scientific recognition
of the educational value of artistic subjects in developing culturally valuable, core
intelligences; and because developmental psychology has such a large impact on
educational policy and general curriculum in early childhood education.
According to Gardner, symbol systems are:
. . . culturally contrived systems of meaning which capture important forms of informa-
tion. Language, picturing, mathematics are but three of the symbol systems that have
become important the world over for human survival and human productivity. /. . ./ A
primary characteristic of human intelligence may well be its ‘natural’ gravitation toward
embodiment in a symbolic system . (Gardner, 1983, p. 66; my emphasis).

Other symbol systems are bodily-gestural, musical, spatial and ‘personal systems’
(p. 26). Gardner states further that:
. . . what characterises human intelligences, as against those of other species, is their
potential for being involved in all manner of symbolic activity*/the perception of
 Dramatic playing 45

symbols, the creation of symbols, the involvement with meaningful symbolic systems of
all sorts (p. 298). /. . ./ a symbol can convey some mood, feeling, or tone. /. . ./ By
including the important expressive function within the armament of a symbol, we are able
to talk about the full range of artistic symbols , from symphonies to square dances, from
sculpture to squiggles, all of which have potential for expressing such connotative
meanings . (Gardner, 1983, p. 301; my emphasis).
From the standpoint of a drama educator, and as a backdrop for my study,
Gardner’s characterisation of the child from two to five was attractive. I include
direct quotations to such a great extent because it is important to emphasise that
Gardner’s formulations here shed a potentially positive light on symbolic play*as it /
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does on other symbolic activities of the young child:

. . . epoch-making events occur in the child’s symbolic development. The ages of two to
five mark the time when basic symbolization develops, when the child becomes able to
appreciate and to create instances of language (sentences and stories), two-dimensional
symbolization (pictures), three-dimensional symbolization (clay and blocks), gestural
symbolization (dance), music (songs), drama (pretend play), and certain kinds of
mathematical and logical understanding, including an appreciation of basic numerical
operations and simple causal explanations. By the close of the period, the time when
children in our society enter school, they possess an initial or ‘first-draft’ knowledge of
symbolization; they may then go on in the years that follow to achieve fuller symbolic
mastery. (Gardner, 1983, p. 305; my emphasis).
I will attempt to delineate what I consider*from a drama and theatre educational
/

perspective*as a shortcoming in Gardner’s otherwise intriguing study and conclu-

/

sions. He states that symbolic products (‘stories and sonnets, plays and poetry . . .’, my
emphasis) are the raison d’être for symbol systems (p. 301). Pretend play is seen as
drama, on the same line as children’s early symbolic products in music, dance,
linguistic/poetic and pictorial symbolisations. However, the relationship between
pretend play and ‘artistic symbols’ is not further developed*as it is in regard to
/

children’s other symbolic products. Children’s musical, kinesthetic, spatial and

linguistic capacities are described in terms of aesthetic qualities and artistic
antecedents. For instance, musical intelligence is described in terms of sensitivity to
aesthetic qualities in tone and rhythm, etc. and the trajectory toward musical mastery
(p. 105 and Chapter 14). In Gardner’s suggestions for fostering these other symbolic
capacities, their connection with adult art forms is made explicit, especially in the
discussion of implications of the findings for pictorial arts education (Chapter 14).
Pretend playing is not conceived of in such terms. There is no conceptualisation of
aesthetic qualities in regard to pretend play, nor of pretend play as the site of a
‘dramatic intelligence’. Gardner does not posit a ‘dramatic intelligence’. However,
one possible reading of his text is that the ability to play symbolically in pretend play
could be interpreted fruitfully as a culturally relevant ‘executive capacity’, in the
context of child-culture. However, this is a context he does not discuss (pp. 274
276,
and 316
320). A ‘dramatic capacity’ is not conceptualised and the enhancement of
pretend play (drama) is not discussed in terms of drama and theatre arts education.
On the other hand, Gardner discusses the competences of the mime, Marcel
Marceau (pp. 206
207), and the Balinese clown (pp. 226
228), but here in relation
 46 F. G. Guss

to ‘bodily-kinesthetic intelligence’. In doing so, the bodily-gestural symbol system, and

not symbolic play, is linked to acting skills. As drama educators we would see that
one cannot separate the bodily-gestural symbol system from the symbolic play
system. Gardner considers acting skills, in relation to the body-gestural symbol
system, as the ability to observe carefully and then to re-create scenes in detail
(p. 226)*to create a role through re-creation of feelings (in terms of Stanislavsky’s
/

concept of emotional memory), or through ‘attention to surface details’ (p. 228,

perhaps a reference to Brecht and developments after Stanislavsky). Bodily-
kinesthetic intelligence is certainly involved in creating a role, but Gardner has not
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made the link to dramatic-symbolic playing. One must ask: where in his picture is the
children’s complex symbolic use of voice, objects, space, and time, and their
dramaturgical shaping, that constitute dramatic playing?
My main concern here is that Gardner, unfortunately for drama education, does
not address the full range of dramatic production skills involved in symbolic playing,
skills that are apparent to the observer trained in dramatic arts. Because of this,
drama and theatre education are excluded from the scientific recognition that his
work otherwise has bestowed on education in dance, music, pictorial arts, and
language arts. It seems that, within the developmental psychology framework, a link
between the play form of drama (symbolic play) and the art form of theatre is not
seen as relevant for cultural and educational purposes.
On the other hand, Gardner conceptualises the valuable outcomes of pretend
playing as intrapersonal and interpersonal competences or intelligences*‘access to one’s
/

own feeling life’ and ‘the ability to notice and make distinctions among other
individuals and, in particular, among their moods, temperaments, motivations, and
intentions’ (p. 239); as well as being the central locus for ‘event-structuring’. These
capacities are undoubtably of the greatest importance in a child’s/person’s life, as well
as for the dramatist, the actor, and the director. Nonetheless, Gardner’s focus does
not inform the aesthetic and artistic perspective on playing. Coming from dramatic
arts, we see that these sensibilities and awarenesses are also the foundations for acting
and dramaturgical composition (i.e. event-structuring)*hence, my wish to supple-
/

ment Gardner’s findings from an aesthetic
reflective
cultural perspective in a way

that could provide new play theory for drama and theatre educationalists. His field’s
missing links have led to the alternative theoretical perspectives and analytical work
in my study.

A cultural focus versus an individual focus

The rapid, complex and ephemeral quality of dramatic playing makes it difficult for
the untrained (‘non-dramatic’) eye to perceive the complexities of the form-making
process, let alone to conceive of it in reflective and cultural perspectives. It is clear
that, in Project Zero’s study, the focus and context in which the phenomenon was
studied did not lend themselves readily to discovering these dimensions in symbolic
play. In the research framework itself, the child-cultural production context was
 Dramatic playing 47

lacking. The researcher visited individual children in their homes during the first
seven years of their lives, and studied them in solitary play or in play with either the
mother or the researcher. However, Gardner states: ‘It is through symbols and symbol
systems that our present framework, rooted in the psychology of intelligences, can be
effectively linked with the concerns of culture, including the rearing of children . . .’
(1983, p. 300; my emphasis).
My view was that a study of symbolic playing in the context of child culture, and
within the framework of cultural and aesthetic theory, can be meaningfully linked
with such cultural concerns. This view is supported by the play anthropologist Helen
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Schwartzman’s theory (1978, pp. 237
238). Because of the interest in symbolic

playing from a cultural, drama perspective*as collective dramatic playing, the need
/

was felt to extend the basis for understanding this symbol system. In order to stress
that the research object is, specifically, drama*in the play context*the term
/ /

‘symbolic play’ is dropped from the original working title. In the first instance, I
replaced the term with dramatic playing. As the cultural dimension began to take
centre-stage in the research, I renamed the phenomenon play-drama. This term
denotes a drama that is performed in the cultural context of play. In this choice I
emphasise that my interest is not in the individual child’s symbolic mastery alone but,
rather, in the cultural-aesthetic process of symbolic mastery that lies in collective
dramatic playing. It also emphasises how the children’s minds/imaginations appear to
be intersubjectively at play in an aesthetic medium, and that collective dramatic
playing is an intersubjective reflective practice.
The question arose as to how children, in the process of their playing, combine the
art-like symbol systems; and how this combinatory work can be understood to
involve an aesthetic and reflective practice that can ‘capture important forms of
information’ (Gardner, 1983, p. 66). Related to Gardner’s understanding of the
artistic symbols’ potential for expressing connotative meanings, the study lays the
ground for understanding the extent to which, and how, the children’s play with form
may lead to sensory knowing, insight/clear perception of meaning, or re-cognition (in
Norwegian, erkjennelse).

Beyond Gardner’s theory: other problematics

The questions that need to be answered for drama/theatre educators and which I
pose in the research are as follows. How do children in their symbolic work in
dramatic playing embody and actualise their experience and awareness in dramatic
form*aesthetically and reflectively? How do they structure and express events such
/

that the form is aesthetically gripping for them, allowing them better to grasp the
meanings of the experiences with which they are playing? How do they sensorily
represent their experiences and perceive and receive these sensory representations?
How do children combine the artistic symbols in their playing into a drama
performance*with aesthetic qualities related to storytelling and metaphoric
/

language, staging awareness, musicality, scenography, props, etc.? How can drama
 48 F. G. Guss

performance in children’s symbolic playing be understood as culturally significant,

aesthetic production? In sum: how do children collectively reflect on and interpret
experience in dramatic form? And: How is their socio-cultural life conducted in
aesthetic-symbolic modes?
The concept of ‘experience’ is an important term when exploring the interrelation-
ship between dramatic form-making, imagination and reflection, both in regard to
children’s autonomous play-drama and in regard to our drama education. In English,
the use of the word experience can produce communicative opaqueness. It can mean
sensory data as well as cognition about, and reflection over, the data. The social
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anthropologist Victor Turner traces its Indo-European etymological roots to per*to /

attempt, venture, risk*related to the Greek perao, which means ‘I pass through’.
/

Turner (1986) points out that in this sense ‘experience is drama’s double, as in per il’.
‘Experience’ can also be linked to the word ‘ex-per -iment’ (p. 35). The anthro-
pologist Edward Bruner defines experience both as data, cognition, and expecta-
tions*‘. . . actions and feelings, but also reflections about those actions and feelings’
/

(Bruner & Turner, 1986, p. 13). We say we have had an experience, but also that we
accumulate (life) experience. In the German language, the writer and arts theorist
Walter Benjamin defines the distinction between Erlebnis and Erfahrung in the
following way: the former means thrill, sensation, excitement; the latter means
something lived through and reflected upon. This is clarified in his statement that
Brecht ‘endeavors to refract the spectrum of ‘‘thrill’’ [Erlebnis, what I call
‘‘experience’’] in order to derive from it the hues of ‘‘experience’’ [Erfahrung , what
I call ‘‘Experience’’]’ (Huxley & Witts, 1996, p. 68). In the Norwegian language
which I use daily, we also have two words that make the same distinction: we use
opplevelse to mean a thrill or sensation, and erfaring to mean sensory data that we
have reflected over so that it becomes clarified and generalised.
In the dissertation, when I use experience with a small ‘e’, I refer to a ‘perceptual
core’, and ‘images that have been evoked with unusual clarity’ (Bruner & Turner,
1986, p. 13). When I use Experience, with a capital ‘E’, I refer to a perceptual core of
images that the children have reflected over in dramatic form, such that they become
more clarified and generalised than before the dramatic reflection. This is a
‘knowing’, even when the knowing encompasses contradictions and an ambiguity
of meanings.

‘Aesthetic’ practice versus ‘proto-artistic practice’

Gardner explicitly links children’s early symbolic products to adult art forms, i.e. as
proto-artistic products. However, because of its multifarious connotations, often
misleading for others, I replace the term ‘proto-artistic practice’ with ‘aesthetic
practice’. By considering dramatic playing as drama, as a member of the cultural
drama family, and by finding a way to use the drama-family vocabulary to describe the
formal process in play, I place dramatic playing more firmly in a cultural and
aesthetic perspective. With this vocabulary, dramatic playing can be understood as
 Dramatic playing 49

drama performed as a play-cultural form, whereas theatre is drama performed as an

art form, and ritual drama is drama performed as a religious form. Conceptualising
pretend play as ‘proto-artistic’ practice was meant to connote that drama in a play
form is not (yet) an artistic practice, but can be understood as its potential precursor
in the life of a human being. However, there are semantic reservations to be raised
regarding this concept:
. The use of ‘proto-artistic’ practice suggests that the concern of the project is
ontogenetic: to show the value of dramatic playing as a precursor or antecedent to,
and on the way to, a (presumed) higher and more valuable form, the art form of
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theatre. Contrary to this, I explore the idea that dramatic playing is a valuable
form of cultural drama in its own right, in the child-cultural context in which it
emerges. There is no hierarchical valuing at the source of my questions and,
therefore, the language used to articulate the project’s concerns should guard
against a misunderstanding of this point.
. The term proto-artistic also suggests that thinking of dramatic playing in a
continuum with theatre arts will result in evaluating the children’s expressions on
artistic grounds. Rather, I wish to describe and interpret the process in dramatic
playing on aesthetic grounds*not necessarily tied to institutional theatre arts
/

practice; but with whatever theory, tools, vocabulary and procedures that can
capture and characterise the aesthetic dimension in the spontaneous production of
drama culture.
. In addition, the term leads to associations about the phylogenetic/horizontal
matrix*as in: ‘What came first in the phylogenetic chain*children’s dramatic
/ /

playing or theatre?’ ‘Do the dramaturgical structures, conventions and genres of

adult theatre exist innately in the human psyche from birth?’ It would be
impossible in an empirical study to uncover whether or not some dramatic
structures are inborn. Do unhoned dramatic conventions from play continue into
adult artistic, dramatic culture; or, conversely, can children’s dramatic conven-
tions be viewed as a reprocessing of material (form) from their experiences of adult
dramatic culture? We know that there is a playback mechanism in the socio-
cultural interaction between adults and children, which influences the structures
of children’s play-genres and conventions (Sutton-Smith, 1983; Nicholson, 1995).
This provides foundational insight for drama education, but the question remains:
what kinds of dramatic conventions do children use and how do they employ
them?
Replacing ‘proto-artistic practice’ with ‘aesthetic practice’ avoids a confusion of
associations and priorities. It places Gardner’s symbolic play on the agenda as:
dramatic playing that is constituted aesthetically. It reminds us that the concept
‘aesthetic’ connotes a form of knowing that we have access to through sensory
perception and feeling. In addition, rather than viewing the value of dramatic playing
entirely on the grounds of its being a precursor to some higher developmental stage,
 50 F. G. Guss

the term allows an exploration of collective playing as a cultural phenomenon with

value in its own right*as significant cultural production for the players.
/

An understanding of how children’s cultural-aesthetic practice operates seems to

me essential for drama and theatre artists who (inter)act with groups of children.
How to find some answers?

A methodological framework
My first concern was to conduct a field study over a period of half a year, in order to
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document on videofilm the autonomous (adult-free) collective dramatic playing, of a

stable group of children. The fieldgroup comprised 14 day-care children between the
ages of two and six/seven years (before school age) in an institution in which the
personnel work/play intensively with drama with, and theatre for, children. Secondly,
I developed analytical tools culled from theory in social anthropology, aesthetics,
theatre studies/dramaturgy and performance studies. In social anthropological and
dramaturgical terms, the research conceptualises the children’s aesthetic-symbolic
practice and their attending intersubjective reflection over the formal and thematic
content of their playing.
As entry level categories for distinguishing among the complex symbolic-aesthetic
actions that children perform in their play-drama, I identify abilities belonging to the
positions and form-languages of a: dramatist, dramaturg, director, actor, storyteller,
dancer/choreographer, musician/composer, scenographer, costume designer, props person,
light designer and sound designer. In addition the position of audience was included as
an integral part of the players’ performance culture. When these positions were
assigned, the subsequent analytical levels that were developed in the course of the
study were: a dramaturgical comparison of the children’s aesthetic practice with
selected contemporary theatre praxes: comparison with production processes,
theatre conventions and theoretical dramaturgical models; comparison with theory
of folk-cultural aesthetics; as well as the application of points in performance theory
(see Guss, 2001). I will give a brief summary of a dramaturgical interpretation below.

Play-drama dramaturgy and the search for meanings

In a large room full of light, Tessa (3.8 years old) and Hilde (5.1 years old) are quietly
playing. They are mothers who take care of their babies. Tessa goes over to the
bookshelf to find a book to read for her baby. She finds Little Red Riding Hood. On
the cover is a watercolour of the Wolf, with an oversized head and gaping jaw. The
picture provides an aesthetic impulse that sets Tessa’s imagination in play, leading to
a drama that lasts for 40 minutes. Tessa, book in hand, stalks over to Hilde and
announces: Capture the Wolf, We shall! The Mothers are transformed to Wolf-slayers
and a non-linear drama begins in which the wolf is captured and punished in many
variations. I will focus on the first part of the drama here.
 Dramatic playing 51

Tessa and Hilde shoot at the imagined wolf with L-formed wooden blocks. They
wound him. Tessa imprisons him in a square of large rectangular pillows. She then
initiates a wolf-torture that Hilde joins in: as Wolf-slayers, they stand on a ladder-
chair and hop repeatedly on the imagined wolf, onto a mattress a metre from the
chair. The movement is circular: from the chair to the mattress and back to the chair.
They taunt the Wolf. They hop on him. The Wolf is dead, they say, but they continue
to hop. Now he is really dead, they say, but they continue to hop. Now he’s really
really dead, they say, but they continue to hop.
They transform a common hopping game into a symbolic vehicle for wolf-slaying.
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And we can call the circular form of the movement an aesthetic structure: stand up,
hop down, circle back to the chair. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It has a rhythm and a
tempo that they vary and in which they become sensorily immersed.
Furthermore, within Tessa’s hopping structure, she performs two role-figures:
when she stands on the chair she performs the Wolf-slayer. She taunts the Wolf, then
hops and lands on the mattress/the wolf. When she has landed on the mattress, she
rolls over on her back and performs the Wolf’s howling response. Then she stands up
and completes the circle back to the chair, where she once again performs the Wolf-
slayer.
After many minutes of hopping, the girls begin to sweat, they take off their sweat
shirts, they laugh a lot, and Tessa says how much she hates the Wolf. These are
metafictional actions and comments. If this were a devising process toward theatre for
children, we could retain such material as part of the product. In doing so, we would
create two layers of action: the ‘real’ playing context and personal perspectives of the
performers; and the fiction of the wolf-slaying. Child audiences would recognise
these two layers from their own playing and accept them.
Intermittently, in the space on the way back to the chair, Tessa moves the action
from her invented struggle with the Wolf to the world of the fairy tales The Wolf and
the Seven Young Goats and The Three Little Pigs. Thus she creates a third layer of
action. This mental movement, from narrative structure to narrative structure, is
made possible because Tessa, physically, performs a third role, that of a narrator.
Using the Narrator-voice to frame the episode, she mimes and uses sound effects to
perform her version of what happens when the Wolf knocks at the door of the seven
little goats’ house. For example, as Narrator, she says: And someone knocks at the door.
Then she performs the action of that Someone (the Wolf), by knocking on the floor
and saying: Knock, knock. This fairy tale fragment ends when the three little pigs
arrive and rescue the goats. The Narrator says: And they cut off the wolf’s arms and
legs. Tessa’s solution to killing the Wolf once and for all, across the fairy tales, is: unite
and conquer. By intertextualising bits of narrative from the fairy tales, she not only
creates a third fictive layer, she creates a new and temporary perspective on the Wolf:
he can be overcome forever. In addition, she creates a new perspective on herself, as
heroine and plot-transformer.
The Wolf is now dead, we would presume. But no, Tessa returns to her slaying
ritual, in which he is very much alive again. Several times, she repeats this pattern of
 52 F. G. Guss

moving back and forth between her hopping drama and the drama in the fairy tale
fragments.
What meanings is Tessa performing? In her performance the Wolf dies in each
episode, but is alive and howling again in the next episode. Her main impression
seems to be that the same wolf dies in the one fairy tale, but returns again in the next.
She is enacting a composite image of an indestructible and ever-present Wolf-threat.
She seems to perform a search for the meanings of ‘the Wolf’ as a mythical
figure*an exploration of what actually happens to him across the three fairy tales.
/

How is he? Does he die? Does he resurrect? In both parts of the drama, she also
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performs an exploration of what dying means*in regard to both the Wolf’s death
/

and the Wolf-slayers’ deaths. How is dying? Is it like sleeping? Can we wake up after
we die?
The dramaturgical structure that Tessa constructs makes it possible for her to
question the meanings of the fairy tales as well as to transform them. What could we
call this convention? Tessa’s teacher has previously used the solo theatre convention of
dramatic monologue to enact another fairy tale.2 Tessa adopts and adapts it. In
dramatic monologue the actor takes a Narrator-role which both frames the dramatic
situation and comments upon it underway, in a meta-fictional layer. Tessa’s
adaptation allows her to follow the play of her imagination, shifting rapidly from
place to place, from situation to situation, from role-figure to role-figure. She finds
this structuring convention so aesthetically engaging that she expands and expands
upon it. In the Narrator-role she contextualises the dramatic situation and comments
upon it. Then she can move back and forth between this position and the enactment
of, and perspectives on, several fictive roles and situations.
Tessa is not yet four years old, yet she is juggling several roles and several dramatic
situations. Her transformation of the monologue-structure makes it possible for her
to deconstruct the fairy tales and to glue them together again in a new way. We can
describe Tessa’s performance as a multi-voiced and ambiguous seeking process. Her
consciousness lies on the threshold of the consciousnesses of several fairy-tale
consciousnesses, and is in a continual dialogue with them (see Bakhtin, 1984). On
this dialogic threshold, she comes to no definitive meanings, no synthesis, nor final
truth. There are only temporary truths. The Wolf is buried, but he is still howling.

Conclusions and implications

At the conclusion of the three year doctoral research, I came to view the capacity for
intersubjective, expert dramatic playing as an ‘executive capacity’, as a dramatic
intelligence.
With this intelligence, the children deploy and co-ordinate all the capacities of the
multiple artistic symbols within a dramatic framework. The children’s skills go far
beyond what Gardner posits as the interpersonal and intrapersonal. Their skills can
be compared with those of the theatre auteur, albeit often manifested in a first-draft
form. With a focus on the socio-cultural production aspect, ensemble interaction is at
 Dramatic playing 53

the core of any successful play-drama. In their dramatic interaction children

demonstrate social skills at continuously responding aesthetically, and at high speed,
to each other’s input. The findings demonstrate clearly the importance of these
aspects in the formation of a strong child-cultural drama culture in day-care
institutions. On and off throughout the long hours in day-care, play-ensembles enter
and exit the drama-cultural mode*in what we can characterise as a symbolic-
/

aesthetic social life.

Some fortunate children possess a natural command of drama performance in
children’s play-culture. Those who do not, and who are thereby excluded from its
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benefits, can develop it through arts-pedagogical modelling practices. Therefore, I

am currently working on the development of an ‘aesthetic play-system’, related to the
artistic production positions in theatre, that can be used to nurture young children’s
complex form-language, dramatic conventions, expressive skill, and dramatic
intelligence. With this they can wonder together, interpret and reflect over
experiences, over themselves and each other, and over the world around them:
temporary discoveries in dramatic form.

Notes
1. Project Zero, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University.
2. I also found dramaturgies resembling those of avant-garde devising groups (see Guss, 2000,
2001, 2002).

Notes on contributor
Faith Gabrielle Guss, is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education in Oslo
University College. Since 1972, she has taught drama and theatre in Norway
and directed theatre for children as well as with youth. She has published
extensively on theatre production, drama and theatre with and for children, and
on drama in children’s play-culture.

References
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984) Rabelais and his world (Indiana University Press).
Bruner, E. & Turner, V. (1986) The anthropology of experience (Urbana, University of Illinois).
Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences (New York, Basic Books).
Guss, F. G. (2000) Devised theatre and play-drama: aesthetic structures, Drama 2 (Oslo,
Landslaget Drama i Skolen), 22
27.
Guss, F. G. (2001) Drama performance in children’s culture. The possibilities and significance of form.
Ph.D. thesis, University of Trondheim, Rapport 6 (Oslo, Oslo University College Press).
Guss, F. G. (2002) Innovative dramaturgies in theatre for children, in: C. Comans & J. O’Toole
(Eds) Selected Papers, Drama Australia Journal (nj), 26(1)/IDEA Journal , 2, 63
70.
Huxley, M. & Witts, N. (1996) The twentieth century performance reader (London, Routledge).
Nicholson, H. (1995) Genre, gender and play: feminist theory and drama education, NADIE
Journal, 19(2), 15
24.
 54 F. G. Guss

Schwartzman, H. (1978) Transformations. The anthropology of children’s play (New York, Plenum
Press).
Sutton-Smith, B. (1983) The origins of fiction and the fictions of origin, in: E. Bruner (Ed.) Text,
play and story. The construction and reconstruction of self and society (Washington, The
American Ethnographic Society).
Turner, V. (1986) Dewey, Dilthey and drama, in: E. Bruner & V. Turner (Eds) The anthropology of
experience (Urbana, University of Illinois)
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