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Games in Education and Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Clive Barker
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Extract

In his major work on Theatre Games (Methuen, 1987), Clive Barker provided both a practical textbook on the uses of game-playing for actors, and some theoretical background to its value. There, he largely stressed the function of games as a means to an end - the development of acting skills through the enrichment of the rehearsal process. In NTQ14 (1988). he described how he came to develop ‘games workshops’ for non-theatrical purposes, and considered the value of games-playing for adults by analogy with the function of the ‘kissing games’ of his own childhood and adolescence. In this article (based on a paper presented in November 1988 at the conference on theatre and education in Mohammédia, Morocco), he considers our changing perception of the relationship between the two senses of ‘play’, and the way in which ‘games’ have been institutionalized to avoid their inherent threat to an organized, work-disciplined society-a trend still being reinforced, as the improvisatory element of drama in schools becomes subject to the rigours of evaluation and examination. Clive Barker, whose career in the professional theatre began with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly, and now teaches in the Joint School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 19 , August 1989 , pp. 227 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

Notes and References

1. A compressed account of the main features of this writing appears in Courtney, Richard, Play, Drama, and Thought (London: Cassell, 1968), p. 7–39Google Scholar.

2. It is not possible to detail all the directions this process took, but one significant manifestation in popular entertainment can be seen in Dan Leno. Leno, working at the end of the nineteenth century, as much as anybody established the present form of popular solo comedy. In his career he worked successively for two major managements, Collins and Harris. The story goes that Collins said to him ‘I pay you £40 a week go out there and be funny’. Harris said to him ‘I pay you £60 a week. I can't risk you going your own way. Go out there and do as I tell you, in your own inimitable way.’

3. Cook, Caldwell, The Play Way (London: Heinemann, 1917)Google Scholar.

4. McGregor, , Tate, , and Robinson, , Learning Through Drama (London: Heinemann, 1977)Google Scholar, comes with the backing of the educational establishment and is extremely limiting in the principles it propounds. The authors assert in their introduction that there is, in fact, only one way in which drama in education can be practised. Ignoring many important theorists and practitioners whose ideas contradict their own, they set out a reductive version of Stanislavski as the only way. Pupils learn only by putting themselves into role. There has also recently been a return to the performance of scripted plays rather than improvisation as the main drama activity.

5. The recent reorganization of the examination system in schools has established the GCSE examination for 16-year-olds. In the drama exam, students are required to ‘improvise’ in front of a board of examiners, using an external object, or letter, or poem to inspire them.

6. Some years ago I was involved with another actor in a project which tried to discover, through experimentation, what the role in education could be for an actor, beyond performing plays and without simply taking on the role of another drama teacher. Three teachers were assigned to help with this project. The project was marked by extreme conflict as the actors tried to move more and more to playing with the children in an interactive way and the teachers tried to structure elaborate games which seemed always to set up power hierarchies in which they ruled the world and the children were messengers, helpers, and general servants.

7. The contradictions of the adventure playgrounds gave cause to great anxiety, which was reflected in a rash of television and theatre plays during the late-1970s in which the central character was a youth leader in charge of such a playground.

8. Football pitches have diminished in numbers, having been taken over for housing schemes. Quarries and other industrial sites have been developed as marinas or skin-diving pools.

9. J. L. Moreno, as early as 1921, established the contradictory nature of a theatre which tried to face both ways - to be structured and to be improvisatory. During the early 1920s he ran a purely improvisatory theatre in Vienna, working with such actors as Elizabeth Bergner and Peter Lorre. The principles are set out in Moreno, J. L., The Theatre of Spontaneity (New York: Beacon House, 1947)Google Scholar.

10. See Vakhtangov, E., Vakhtangov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 151–8Google Scholar.

11. Stanislavski, K. S., An Actor Prepares (London: Bles, 1937), p. 1–11Google Scholar.

12. Spolin, Viola, Improvisations for the Theatre (London: Pitman, 1973)Google Scholar.

13. Spolin extends Stanislavski's work from the studio to full productions. Stanislavski experienced opposition in getting his methods adopted by the acting company of the Moscow Art Theatre and most of his work was developed and used with young actors in training in the studio. Spolin does not question whether her extension is viable in the world of professional theatre.

14. Hodgson, J. and Richards, E., Improvisation (London: Methuen, 1966)Google Scholar.

15. Johnstone, Keith, Impro (London: Faber, 1979)Google Scholar.

16. Irving Wardle, preface to Impro.

17. Opie, I. and P., The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Clarendon Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Children's Games in Street and Playground (Clarendon Press, 1969); The Singing Game (Clarendon Press, 1985).

18. Children's Games in Street and Playground, p. 1.

19. Ibid., p. 3–4.

20. Recapitulation theory seeks to find in children's play a recapitulation of all the stages of human evolution. I find this too schematic and mechanistic.

21. Caillois, Roger, Les Jeux et les hommes (Paris: Gallimard, 1958)Google Scholar; in English as Man, Play, and Games (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962).

22. See Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens (New York: Roy, 1950)Google Scholar.

23. Man, Play, and Games, p. 175.

24. The four categories are competition, chance, simulation, and vertigo. Combinations of these elements produce mixed categories.

25. Man, Play, and Games, p. 65.

26. Ibid., p. 27.

27. Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959)Google Scholar. See also his Asylums, Frame Analysis, Interaction Ritual.

28. The Presentation of Self, p. xi.

29. Goffman's view of theatre is surprisingly reductive and old-fashioned. He draws his language and dramaturgical structure from the realist, well-made play. Surprisingly, what makes it possible for me to discuss games as a theatrical phenomenon is due to a shift from theatre studies to performance studies, inside which theatre is a subsection of the wider study of human behaviour. Goffman, as much as anybody, prepared the way for this shift.

30. Poulter, Christine, Playing the Game (Basingstoke: Mac-millan, 1987), p. viiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Berman has been director of Inter-Action, a community-arts project based in London since 1968.

32. Taken from an unpublished document on the Inter-Action games method, written by Berman.

33. Creative Play, p. 12–13.

34. Nickerson, and O'Laughlin, , ‘The Therapeutic Use of Games’, in Schaefer, and O'Connor, , eds., Handbook of Play Therapy (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1983), p. 174–87Google Scholar.

35. Sue Jennings is an anthropologist and dramatherapist. Her books include Remedial Drama (London: Pitman, 1973) and Creative Therapy (London: Pitman, 1975). The use of games has now been incorporated into rehabilitation work in prisons by Geese Theatre in the US and UK.

36. My work is fully set out in Barker, Clive, Theatre Games (London: Methuen, 1977)Google Scholar.

37. The simplest game is catching a ball, which coordinates hand and eye. When the ball can be caught proficiently, the player throws the ball and claps his/her hands behind the back before making the catch. The number of claps multiply. The catcher throws the ball against the wall and turns round, reducing the time in which he/she can see the ball before making the catch.

38. In a football match, what we understand as the rules fall into the first category. All football matches conform to the same rules. But football is a game and the skills have to be learned and developed. In training and in practice there is a whole range of subsidiary play activities dealing with fitness, speed of reaction, skill at controlling the ball, and tactical set-pieces. In these activities rules are applied so that when the game is played the player's ability is greater and he can respond freely and instantaneously to the demands of the situation. This example also serves for a range of theatrical situations.

39. See Hunt, Albert, Hopes for Great Happenings (London: Methuen, 1976)Google Scholar.

40. Boal, Augusto, Le Théâtre de I'opprimé (Paris: Maspero, 1977)Google Scholar. The use of games has spread into many areas of non-formal education and consciousness-raising in the developing countries.