17
Drama
Peter Hollindale
‘Children’s literature’ is a term which asks for subtle and flexible definitions, but as
commonly used it has the almost universal common features of adult authorship, child
readership, professional publication and a stable text. If these criteria are applied to
drama, and we think of an equivalent ‘dramatic literature for children’, then the field is a
very narrow one. It begins only in the late nineteenth century, falls into relative inertia in
the years between the two World Wars, and gathers momentum only after 1945. Even
now, many plays for children achieve only local performance, remain unpublished, and
fail to win a regular place in the repertoire.
On the other hand, if we detach the word ‘drama’ from the constraints of ‘dramatic
literature for children’ and interpret it more generously, we find that far from being the
youngest and most ill-supplied of literary art forms for children, it is actually the oldest,
the most fundamental to child development, and the one in which children as
performers if not as originators have engaged most nearly on equal terms with adults.
Children encounter their ‘dramatic literature’ only by attending the performance of a
children’s play. But they encounter ‘drama’ whenever they play, act out stories, imitate
other people, experiment with social roles, pretend to be someone else whom they
admire or fear or love. John O’Toole, in his book Theatre in Education (1976), defines
drama as ‘the symbolic representation at first hand of the working out of relationships
involving human beings’, and he gives examples of this process at work in children’s
dramatic play.
Children in their own dramatic play act out stories and explore worlds where the
outcome is in their hands; they create their own conventions: ‘You’ve got to lie
down, you’re dead’... We must all have seen children externalising their fears and
anxieties by playing bears, exploring the implications of conflict and morality in
games of cowboys and Indians, learning to copy adult behaviour playing Mummies
and Daddies—and sometimes doing all three at once (children in wartime will
endlessly play fighters and bombers, tanks and ambushes). All the time they are
unconsciously developing their ability to co-exist and work co-operatively,
discovering and extending the limits of mutually acceptable behaviour, learning
about leaders and roles, acceptance and rejection; often with tears, exasperation
and boredom.
O’Toole 1976:18