Webpage Supplement to
Chapter26: The Art of Play
Adam Blatner
Revised, April 9, 2007
Notes, An anecdote about transition to
adulthood; References, Quotations further down.
There are many
aspects of play:
Theoretically, There are sports and games, and Bernie DeKoven in the book notes how even more
or less structured games may have dramatic elements. The Art of Play emphasizes more imaginative, make-believe play.
http://www.csuchico.edu/kine/tasp/index.html The Association for the Study of Play (TASP) is an important resource.
Innumerable others on the web. If you find some particularly useful
ones, let me know.
(Some are more about games– that would link to Bernie DeKoven’s chapter and website.)
(Some are more about “warm-ups.” as noted in the Appendix.)
- - -
The function of
play has been explored by those studying comparative animal behavior,
“ethology,” noting how many animals also engage in play-like or “ludic”
activity. (Latin: ludus, a play, game).
Anthropologists
and cultural historians have also noted the prevalence of the play
element in culture, in military and religious ceremonies, in games and
even wars. (Increasingly, there has been a tendency to break rules,
involve non-game-players, “civilians,” and so forth; but in the past,
war was paradoxically more “civilized,” a struggle engaged in by
gentlemen, like a duel, with rules and courtesies.) Religious ritual
also has a play element, in the sense of flexibility, though not
frivolity–with the exception of fool’s day reversal celebrations.
Another field is
that of humor studies, with organizations that explore and promote the
use of humor as a way to reduce stress and increase effectiveness in
business and organizations, in life, and so forth.
Increasingly,
the role of imaginative play is being promoted in the child development
literature. Of course it has been a core element in psychotherapy with
children, and to a small degree, some have even applied these methods
with adults!
Many of the
elements of imaginative play are expressed in the methods described in
the other chapters in the book: drama in education, drama therapy,
drama with the elderly, etc.
Those
considering the nature of leisure and recreation–and there are
professionals and societies addressing these–google leisure studies,
recreation, recreational therapy, etc.–also deal not only with
playground design, but must address the imaginative play that is
enacted in such play structures.
Another related
field looks at the nature of creativity itself and what can be done to
promote more creativity in the world. This is a relatively new field,
in a world that has only in the last few centuries come to value
innovation rather than be inclined to suppress it. (That is part of the
transition from a traditionalist culture that relied and over-valued
the “old ways, tried and true,” and towards modernity, progress, and a
sense that new ideas and inventions are often more relevant and
valuable than the old.) In the present global economic system,
competition that requires innovative work becomes a major way of
adapting and surviving! (See Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.)
Related to
creativity is its root dynamic process, spontaneity. This is the
opposite of mere obedience, mindless bureaucracy, routine, habit,
automatic reaction patterns. (Those could be viewed as different ways
of being robot-like, or what Yablonsky called “robopathy”–the
pathological state of responding to pre-programmed orders rather than
the needs of the immediate circumstances. Spontaneity requires a sharp
openness to input from not only the environment, but also from all
inner resources–thinking, feeling, imagination, intuition, sensation,
and so forth. Imaginative play sensitizes the mind to these more subtle
inputs, and therefore develops spontaneity as a skill set.
In that sense,
play and spontaneity, improvisation and imagination all are integral
parts of many therapists and educators who use the creative arts.
Admittedly, there are still teachers of the various arts modalities
that operate in a more traditionalist, rote-memory-oriented approach;
but increasingly, teachers are shifting to bringing out the creative
potentials in the creative subconscious of their students or clients.
Music, dance, poetry, sculpture, art, and other forms may be mixed or
developed, along with drama. Kids often mix these media anyway–they
don’t in real life operate in separate compartments or academic
departments.
Another related
field has emerged called “performance studies,” and it examines a
number of inter-related aspects of play, self-conscious and unconscious
performance, ceremony, drama, sociology and cultural history,
anthropology, ritual studies, etc. Other fields that have been looking
more at the nature and role of play, informal dynamics, etc., include
linguistics, sociology, social psychology, and history.
Fred Donaldson is a
play artist who does amazing things:
Donaldson, O. Fred. (1993). Playing By Heart: The Vision & Practice
of Belonging; Nevada City. CA: In-Joy Publications, 1993. soft cover,
244 pages. It's only available from me at this point. Price
is $18.00 + $2.00 postage in USA.Web
site is www.originalplay.com
Email: Ofreddybear@aol.com
In November,
2005, Fred Donaldson wrote: This year I've played with dolphins in
Hawaii & Bimini, Beluga whales in Churchill, and wolves in New
Mexico. Besides playing with children around the world. One
of the mysteries that continues to delight me is the ability of street
kids to play right away with no signs of aggression. I had experienced
it three times in South Africa and this year again in the
Philippines. In all 4 of these cases the kids had no idea who I
was, no instruction about what to do or how to be; they were from 6 to
19 years old; in groups of 10 to 60. Boys that come immediately
from violence into play with no attacks, no revenge against me, each
other, or the women I brought into the play. Today, an autistic boy who
has seen me now for 5 months hugged me when I said goodby. What a
wonderful gift.
Brian Sutton
Smith to Blatner, November, 2004: I did get your book and it is very
good. I like your approach. But I am heavily invested in trying
to finish my current book and that's about all I can handle at the
moment. Have you seen the book PLAYWORK by Fraser Brown, Oxford U Press 2003. It
gives an idea of what the British play workers ( it is now a
profession) are doing. The government finances their care of kids when
both parents are working so it’s a mad house of viewpoints.
Quotations:
The sensibility of the Art of Play is poetically expressed at the end of the 1980 Muppets Movie, when the muppets sing the following variation of the initial song, The Rainbow Connection:
“Why are there
so many songs about rainbows? That’s part of what rainbows do.
Rainbows are
memories, sweet dream reminders–/ What is it you’d like to do?
All of us
watching and hoping you find it, we know that you’re watching too.
Someday you’ll
find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers and you.”
"...Most of us
suspect we are unworthy of the greatest freedom we have been granted,
the freedom to invent ourselves..."
Dave Marsh, ELVIS
"What makes the
biological machinery of man so powerful is that it modifies his actions
through his imagination. It makes him able to symbolize, to project
himself into the consequences of his acts, to conceptualise his plans,
and to weigh them, one against another, as a system of values. We as
men are unique. We are the social solitaries. We are the creatures who
have to create values in order to elucidate our own conduct, so that we
learn from it and can direct it into the future. -- Jacob
Bronowski, The Visionary Eye
"The
prejudice against child art is part of the larger prejudice against the
mind of the child. Each adult can recall his own schooling, when he was
made aware of his inadequate (though potentially adequate) physical and
mental capacities. In later years, it is difficult for him to respect
the activities or art products of any child." -- Rhoda Kellogg,
Analyzing Children's Art
"Long
experience has taught me not to know anything in advance and not to
know better, but to let the unconscious take precedence."–
Carl G. Jung, Mandala Symbolism
"Our lives
have become increasingly programmed and our experiences packaged.
Participation in any of the arts is, therefore, more needed today than
at any other period in our history. Drama, of all the arts, demands of
the practitioner a total involvement. By offering an opportunity for
participation in drama, we are helping to reserve something of the play
impulse in all of its joy, freedom, and order."–
Nellie McCaslin Creative Drama in the Classroom, (4th Ed.)
"Flexibility
is a valuable trait for anyone who hopes to survive in our present-day
culture. The extreme conformist has as hard a time as the rebel." –
Elsa Barnouw and Arthur Swan
Adventures With Children In Nursery School and Kindergarten
"...the
self is as strong as it is active...Ours is only that to which we are
genuinely related by our creative activity...only those qualities that
result from our spontaneous activity give strength to the self and
thereby form the basis of its integrity. The inability to act
spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks...[is]
the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we
are aware of it, there is nothing which we are more ashamed of than of
not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride
and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours. This
implies that what matters is the activity as such, the process and not
the result...
If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus
relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and
the world become part of one structuralized whole. He is aware of
himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there
is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself...Positive
freedom as the realization of the self implies the full affirmation of
the uniqueness of the individual." – Erich Fromm, Escape From
Freedom, (pp.261-263) New York: Rinehart & Co., 1941
Depth psychology
is another field that seeks this esoteric goal; its challenge is to
clarify the nature of consciousness itself. Psychoanalysis, in the
broadest sense of the term, and including all of its modifications and
offshoots, has pursued this search beyond the therapeutic context and
across interdisciplinary lines. In contemplating the complexities and
internal resonances of literature, history, and sociology, as well as
clinical case material, psychoanalysis has come up with a startling
discovery:"...The outcome of psychoanalysis is the
discovery that magic and madness are everywhere and dreams is what we
are made of. The goal cannot be the eliminating of magical thinking or
madness; the goal can only be conscious magic, or conscious madness;
conscious mastery of the fires. And dreaming while awake." – Norman O.
Brown, Love's Body,, p.254. (New York: Random House/ Vintage
Books, 1966)
(Adam Blatner's commentary on Brown's quote, above:)
These passionate
(and, I think, intemperate) words can be rephrased and yet their
intrinsic meaning is valid. Non-rational forms of thought need not be
labeled either madness or magic, they can also be play and meditative
trance, and they can be integrated with reason and applied to the
service of creativity (2). However, what psychoanalysis has discovered
is the pervasiveness not of pattern so much as "anti-pattern,"
phenomena that not only resist definition, but defy it, flaunt it, and
celebrate its own non-rational inter-connections.
The vehicle of dramatic play offers a method for bringing consciousness
and social validation to the forces of imagery. Play, which in the
adult becomes freely exploratory inquiry, among other things, allows us
to experiment with the desires of the flesh and heart, sublimating them
into constructive expressions, yet retaining their color and excitement.
General References: Play (In childhood development, etc.)
Christie,
J.F. (Ed.).Play and early literacy development. Albany, NY:
SUNY
Press, 1991.
Dimidjian, V. J.
(Ed.) Play's place in public
education for young children. Washington,
DC: National Education Association, 1992.
Goldstein, J. H.
(Ed.) Toys, play and child
development. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1994.
Isenberg, J. P.
& Jalongo, M. R. Creative
expression and play in the early
childhood curriculum. New York: Macmillan, 1993. (Chapter on
creative
drama, pp. 134-170.)
Moyles, J. R.
Just playing? The role and status of
play in early childhood education.
Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1989.
Singer, D. G.
& Singer, J. L. The house of
make believe: Play and the developing
imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Slade, A. &
Wolf, D. P. (Eds.). Children at
play: Clinical and developmental
approaches to meaning and representation. New York: Oxford
University
Press, 1994. Many scholarly references.
Slade, P. Child
play: Its importance for human development. London &
Bristol, PA:
Jessica Kingsley, 1995.
Sutton-Smith,
Brian
Further References on
Techniques for Dramatic Play, Spontaneity Training, & Theatre
Games:see apxb and apxb website supp...
Hodgson, J.
& Richards, E. Impro.
1966, but add: Also, London: Methuen,
1974.
Johnstone,
Keith. Impro: Improvisation for the
theatre. 1979. ny: theatre arts
books. but add, as above: Also, London: Methuen, 1981.
Spolin, V.
Theater games for rehearsal: A
director's handbook. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1985.See Website supplement
for Appendix B in the Book.
Sustaining Child-Like-ness.
Jeff Miranda, a journalism student from Northeastern University in
Boston, wrote the following article about college students and their
transition to adulthood:
In teams of four, they don brightly colored gym
shorts, sweat bands and tube socks that reach to their calves.
Every few weeks, they meet in the Cambridge YMCA gymnasium for a couple
hours with red, rubber balls and a stereo in tow. Four square is their
game of choice. (See Bernie DeKoven's
Supplementary Website and chapter on Games in the book.)
The four square grids are carefully marked with masking tape, roughly five feet wide in perfectly divided squares. The sound of squeaking sneakers hitting the waxed floor echo across the room. Cheers of encouragement are heard if a player hits the ball particularly well. With every nimble and graceful movement, there are an equal number of flubs. The skill level among the players varies, but no one notices.
Although the environment is a familiar scene on elementary school playgrounds and parks across the country, these players haven’t been privy to the youthful indiscretions of childhood for years. But four square games, along with a number of other perceived child-like activities are increasing in popularity with the college student demographic.
In 2003, Somerville resident Sean Effel co-founded SquareFour, Boston’s first and only organized four square league, with two-time Four Square World Champion Dana Ostberg. He says he’s seen college students come and go through the years who are nostalgic for their youth.
“A lot of guys played a lot when they were kids,” Effel says. “And they want to go back to relive that, because of its novelty. It’s more accessible [than other recreational sports] and it doesn’t require a large background of skills. [They] just come and dive right in.”
On the brink of adulthood, college students are faced with the prospect of a plethora of endless choices: graduate school, job opportunities and even marriage. As a means to adapt, students resort back to a time where they felt most flexible and safe, and childhood represents that, says Christopher Noxon, author of the book, Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up, in which he takes an in-depth look into the adult psyche pining for child-like methods of thinking. Though his book is about post-college adults, he says his theory can easily be applied to students as they prepare to leave the carefree days of adolescence behind.
“The whole notion of adulthood [for college students] is becoming such a prominent problem to solve,” he says. “In your late teens and early 20s, the idea that you’re out here on your own, that’s where the prospect of adulthood becomes much more imminent and [students] resort back to things from their youth. They want to differentiate themselves from the adults they become.”
Justin Keogh, a senior electrical engineering and philosophy major at the University of Pittsburgh, started his school’s first four league with a friend two years ago. Though they both played recreationally, after interest from their friends, they decided to approach the university to form a school-sponsored organization. The club began with 10 members and a constitution, but Keogh says now it boasts 600 students and is the largest non-governmental club on campus.
Phil Thomas, the four square club’s reservations officer and a sophomore information science major, who regularly sees a stress therapist to help cope with school, says four square becomes a form of escapist fun that distracts him from his heavy workload.
“[When you come to college,] you
don’t have anyone that asks you if you did your homework,” he says. “You don’t have parents to make sure you don’t get distracted. A lot of
students don’t realize that until they’re here, suddenly they’re like
‘oh wow, I’m out here I’m on my own,’ and they start panicking. It’s an
escape, when you’re playing fours square you’re not thinking about your
classes.
Harry and the Potters
Twenty seven-year-old Tufts University graduate Paul DeGeorge sits patiently on one of the bright, red leather sofas at the June Bug Café on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. The other patrons’ chatter creates a soft buzz as they sit at chrome tables sipping lattes and chai tea. Though he hasn’t attended a college lecture for nearly five years, DeGeorge’s face still exhibits a youthful exuberance. With his gray hoodie, brown corduroy pants and worn-out Pumas, his presence strolling through a campus quad would be seamless.
DeGeorge is one-half of the Boston-based punk-rock outfit, Harry and the Potters, a band whose origins lie within the pages of the J.K. Rowling’s famous book series. DeGeorge plays guitar while his younger brother, 19-year-old Joe, tackles the keyboard. Both musicians serve as vocalists. Since their eponymous LP was released in 2003, they’ve recorded three other albums; their last was “Power of Love,” which was released this past June. The elder DeGeorge embodies Potter during his seventh year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, (the school in which the book’s characters attend) and the younger DeGeorge is Potter during year four.
While leisurely easing into the arms of the soft leather, DeGeorge says his brother was one who first introduced him to the novels, since he thought they were just “kids stuff.” Since then, the series has become a global phenomenon, attracting both young and old readers. The DeGeorge brothers sparked a following of their own, coining a new musical genre – “wizard rock” – with more than 150 bands around the world.
“These books have really positively changed so many people’s lives,” DeGeorge says. “Maybe we can ride those coattails and as well as open people’s perceptions of music.”
Although the series was initially hailed as children’s literature, some of the series’ most avid followers are college students. With Frostburg State University in Maryland and Pennsylvania State University, among others, offering Harry Potter classes for course credit, its popularity isn’t waning, according to CBS.com. DeGeorge says the boy wizard has been able to identify with a generation because of the threads of real life in the novels.
“I think a lot of the beams from Harry Potter can
sort of tie over into reality,” he says. “One of the most powerful
themes from the book is the power for love to triumph over evil. And I
think if there were more love in the world then I think we wouldn’t
have all problems we face today.”
Additionally, Noxon says Harry Potter’s popularity
rests with its innate ability to simplify a complex world.
Because many of the motifs, themes and characters are connected to
reality, students can color gray their black and white world.
“I think [Harry Potter] absolutely satisfies that need for definite answers, clear delineations for good and evil,” he says. “I think there is something else in Harry Potter, all the gadgets and the candy and the sweetness, those are qualities that are abound in the J.K. Rowling world, but those are in very short supply in the cubicle and the lecture hall world of adults.”
DeGeorge says he hopes his band
will galvanize a generation of young people into understanding that
successful musicians don’t need a million-dollar record contract or an
expensive tour bus to be successful. He says it was the Harry Potter
series that inspires him, and he sees the same independent spirit
fostered in Rowling’s novels.
“Harry is just an everyday kid,” he says. “That’s why so many people can relate to him. Everyday people are capable of great things.”
Noxon says its college students miss the imagination and creativity lost during their childhood.
“I don’t think [college students
who read Harry Potter] are very childish, I think they are human,” he
says. “There’s a great tradition of magical realism, and there’s a
basic human need to believe in the supernatural.”
Transisting into Adulthood
Constance Flanagan, a Pennsylvania State University professor with a Ph.D in developmental psychology, is one the principal investigators on The Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a MacArthur Foundation-funded research initiative that examines the changing environment of young people, and the social and cultural shifts that affect them.
Flanagan attributes the growing trend to a changing social landscape. Because college degrees are more common than in past generations, students are pressured to achieve even more. A bachelor’s degree is often not enough in a competitive job market, says Flanagan. She says students build their anxiety because of the financial uncertainty of life after college. “Although lifetime earnings are much better, college students understand a college degree doesn’t guarantee stability or security,” she says. “This wasn’t true in earlier generations, when there was a steel industry and an auto industry – those were good-paying jobs where a college degree wasn’t necessary.”
Noxon says because it’s common for young people to change career paths as often as they change their majors, there’s no longer a company hierarchy to climb. “Now that economy is changed so much, you just can’t have one skill anymore. You have to be able to be adaptable, the idea that you’re going to get a job right after college and get the gold watch after 40 years, it’s insane,” he says.
Adam Blatner, author of the book, The Art of Play: Helping Adults Reclaim Imagination and Spontaneity, which examines adult resistive-ness to playfulness, says the emphasis on work during college is wrong. There should be a well-rounded mixture of having responsibilities, while also making time for play. “You can make a game out of things, you can pretend to be someone else when you do the dishes,” Blatner says. “Part of the problem is that our culture has artificially distorted the game of leisure. They say, ‘when you’re at work, you can’t have fun,’ but there’s a lot of time for fun.”
Flanagan says universities have failed in fostering
that ideal. Much of her research is devoted to the belief that higher
education should be enabling students to think beyond just getting a
job upon graduation, and more about having a balanced lifestyle. “We
set people up for failure,” she says. “There are other things that give
purpose and meaning to life in addition to training for jobs; that to
invest all of your identity into work is a very shortsighted
preparation for adulthood, ultimately it’s going to be elusive; people
are rarely going to find jobs that they will enjoy for a lifetime.”
Becoming a well-rounded individual is important, she says. “There’s
something to be said for people having variety in their life,” she
says. “A big thing about the college years is exploring who you are,
and if Harry Potter is a way to do that, then presumably that’s what
people are supposed to be doing anyways [in college], discovering who
you are.”
Dodgeball
Ten burly members of Wheaton College’s “Wheaton Ballers” huddle around each other and throw their hands in the middle of the tight circle. “Team Ballers!” they shout unanimously before jogging to one side of the court.
There was a line of small orange cones and yellow dodgeballs dividing the “Ballers” from their opponents, “The Land Sharks.” When the whistle blew, the teams sprinted to the line, aggressively fighting for the coveted spheres of rubber. The players who reached them first immediately thrust the balls to the opposing team, in a single smooth movement. Fits of agony and distress are heard when the balls hit flesh, and cheers erupted when it becomes two “Land Sharks” vs. four “Ballers.”
Tonight marks the first game of the season for the Big Kids Dodgeball Tournament, the largest and most comprehensive dodgeball league in Boston. Sixteen teams of 150 people meet in Basketball City at the TD Banknorth Garden every few weeks to play. Paul Nadaff, director and founder of the organization, says “it gives people an opportunity to blow off some steam.”
“It’s pretty therapeutic in a way when they let go of that ball, you hear them kind of release just a little bit,” he says. “I was a psychology major in college, so I kind of look at it that way – we provide them with a good service.”
Like the rest of his team, “Dance Party Vietnam,” John Tyler, a sophomore media arts and animation major at The Art Institute of Washington in Arlington, VA, wears a pair of gym shorts and a headband. They often travel to compete in dodgeball tournaments, though they also frequently get together with friends to play just for fun.
“Playing relieves a lot of stress,” he says. “For the first time all day I don’t have to worry about school or work.”
Although integrating imagination and play with a strong work ethic is paramount to a healthy lifestyle, Noxon warns that it’s important to strike a balance between partaking in child-like activities and becoming immature.
“It’s very easy to fall into kind of childishness,” he says. “When you fall into some ‘kiddie’ fascination, now you’re sort of acting like a 9-year-old brat. Childishness is no virtue, and you should pick through what is and what isn’t.”
One reason ‘the Rejuvenile” has been allowed to grow and thrive on college campuses is due to students' closer ties with their families, Noxon says. Parents are becoming more accessible and much less “authoritative” than in past generations. Now, it’s common for students to become “best friends with their moms,” and parents foster a belief system that makes it OK to integrate fun into their lives.
It’s a shift, that Noxon says is important as students reach the cliff of maturity and wonder whether to make the jump or turn around.
“I want to maintain our social
conscious and our responsibilities and our long view, but in developing
those skill sets we lose some of the great joys of being alive,” he
says. “I think there’s a way to create a new kind of adulthood. It’s my
hope that we can find a way to become grown-ups that are just as
playful and spontaneous and flexible as kids are.”