Children's Plays - To Do or Not To Do? by Judy Lyden

Twice a year I ask myself the same question - Do we REALLY want to do this play? And the answer is always the same. It's good for the kids.

Producing a children's play can be extraordinarily hard. It can be a nightmare if there is no cooperation from every single resource because it takes a lot of work by everyone included. It means all out cooperation from teachers, parents and students. First, every teacher needs to help with the practices. They need to understand how the lines are meant to be delivered and help train the children to offer the lines the same way until they are second nature. The lines have to be led so that they make sense, are funny when they need to be and straight man delivered when that's the ticket. That's half the work. If one teacher is accepting the lines delivered one way, and another teacher is demanding something else, it won't work. The children won't understand the flow of the play. If one teacher's heart is not in it, or there is a failure of enthusiasm, the children will latch onto that descent and the play will be a poor attempt.

Parents need to help children learn not only their lines, but the lines that surround their lines. If only their lines are learned, they won't know when to come in and speak, and the director is left with a cast that needs every single line prompted -- not fun to listen to, not fun to do.

Children need to be enthusiastic about the play. This is accomplished with lots of kudos, fun practices, and lots of rewards. It can't be the last thing on the list; it has to take precedence and it has to be important to all involved - not an easy trick.

So, if this is really such a work out and a royal pain in the neck, why do it at all? Because The Play as an art has all but been taken out of the lives of small children simply because it is too hard for adults to preside over and teach. It is something that needs to be taught, and there are few adults who know how to teach this until they actually do it. Those yesterday little dramas that children used to get together and do are really no more, and children are missing this early childhood piece of the puzzle. It's a puzzle piece that helps in the development of the whole human being because it uses the whole human being to accomplish!

First, a play allows a child to express himself by becoming someone else. It's a kind of discovery that will benefit him all his life with "becoming someone else" as a theory to understand one another. Putting yourself in someone's place is not something many children do well. It's learned through play acting, through drama, through the unique art of the play.

Becoming someone else is a kind of invention a child rarely gets to do in real life. Even a secretive, quiet child can come out of his shell to play at a new personality. I remember a little girl named Hadley who started her play life as a turtle and spoke her lines into the carpet - but she said them. Two years later, she was one of the stars. There is nothing like a play to bring out an introvert. My grandson, Jack, had to hold up a sign because he was so shy about saying a simple line. But by the time he graduated from the Garden School, he was saying all of his lines out loud. Today he's a bit of a funny man.

Secondly, the play allows children to work together and this bring yet another kind of understanding for each other. It's a bonding friendship maker that doesn't go away. Children who enjoy working together to laugh at funny lines, to become hams on stage, and then enjoy the costumes, solidify friendships. Helping one another is the name of this game.

Learning lines or memorization is a lost art and this is something children need to practice because memorization will serve them all their lives. It's a skill children need to learn early because they are auditory learners until they begin to read, then most of them will change over to visual learners. The quick audio study artist, the child who memorizes sound quickly and can repeat is always at the top of their class, and plays help to make children good memorizers.

A play is a project with a beginning a middle and an end. The project of watching the project grow and develop and have a finishing point is a good lesson for a child. We begin our projects, we work hard on them, and then we have a finished project. For all those adults who start a billion things and let them lay unfinished... perhaps a play in early childhood would have taught the lesson of finishing.

There is a lot of art that goes into producing a play. The making of the backdrop; the costumes; the drama of line delivery; the actions of the characters; the whole ambiance of the show itself. Being a part of this is important for young children. It is especially important at the end of the play when it's done and children have that brilliant sense that THEY have accomplished something wonderful.

So every year when I ask myself the question - "To do or not to do...." I remind myself of all that we would be missing if we decided not to. And we begin.