The young audience : exploring and enhancing children's experiences of theatre PDF
Preview The young audience : exploring and enhancing children's experiences of theatre
The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s Experiences of Theatre The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s Experiences of Theatre Matthew Reason Trentham Books Stoke on Trent, Sterling, USA Winner of the IPG DIVERSITY Award 2010 Trentham Books Limited Westview House 22883 Quicksilver Drive 734 London Road Sterling Oakhill VA 20166-2012 Stoke on Trent USA Staffordshire England ST4 5NP ©2010 Matthew Reason All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. First published 2010 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 85856 771 6 iv Contents Acknowledgements • viii Introduction• ix Part One: Contexts and Questions • 1 Chapter 1 Theatre for Children and Education• 3 Philip Pullman: Theatre – the true key stage • 15 Chapter 2 From Audience Development to Cultural Rights• 17 Tony Graham: Children grow up not down • 31 Chapter 3 Quality in Theatre for Children• 33 Peter Manscher and Peter Jankovic: Eye-level • 41 Part Two The Theatrical Experience • 43 Chapter 4 Researching Children’s Lived Experiences of Theatre• 45 Chapter 5 Theatrical Illusion and Material Reality• 59 Chapter 6 Theatrical Competence• 85 Chapter 7 Moral or Metaphorical Engagement • 101 v Part Three Enhancing Engagement •109 Chapter 8 Enhancing Engagement • 111 Chapter 9 Drawing on the Experience• 119 Chapter 10 Talking about Theatre• 137 Talking about Theatre resource • 154 Conclusion • 167 ‘Looking’: Photographs by Lisa Barnard • 168 The Audience’s Gaze • 169 References • 173 Index • 179 vi Dedication For Alison vii Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to Alice McGrath, Tony Reekie and Imaginate for their co-operation and involvement with many stages of this project. I would also like to thank all the children, teachers and schools who participated in the research for making the project so rewarding and exciting. Thanks for allowing me to reproduce their words or images to Philip Pullman, Tony Graham, Peter Manscher and Peter Jankovic, and Lisa Barnard. I would also like to thank Morag MacInness, Alison Reeves and Brian Hartley who facilitated the research workshops in various ways. I am extremely grateful to the Scottish Government Education Department for finan- cial support for the initial stages of the research. Finally, I would like to thank my partner Alison Dyke and acknowledge the role of my own children – Nathaniel and Aidan – in enhancing my own engagement in theatre for children and young people. viii Introduction T heatre for children, that is theatre written, directed and produced specifically for young audiences, is enjoying a period of thriving activity and interest in the UK. This is demonstrated by more targeted funding support, the prestige gained by certain children’s theatre companies, and the vastly increased attention being paid to questions of quality. Once something of a Cinderella, much neglected in comparison with theatre for grown-ups, theatre for children in the UK has now gained a level of respect and attention like that traditionally accorded children’s theatre in Europe and the United States. The growth in the status of theatre for children as an art form has been accom- panied by widespread interest in the social and educational benefits for young people of the arts in general and theatre in particular. Yet there has been almost no reflective research into this area. While young children (aged 4-11) are increasingly provided for in terms of tailored theatre performances, chil- dren’s perceptions of theatre and their audience experiences have scarcely been investigated. Although there is research on the relationship between the arts and education, there is little that deals with children’s engagement with theatre as theatre. In the clamour of voices advocating the importance of theatre for young people, the voice and the perspective of the children them- selves is missing. It is this gap that The Young Audiencesets out to fill, using original qualitative audience research to uncover the nature of young children’s experiences of live theatre. This book provides a resource for teachers, artists, researchers, students, policy makers and other professionals working with theatre and children, in a range of contexts and environments. It enhances existing cultural policy and educational understandings of theatre for children by providing detailed, analytical and methodologically grounded insight into how young children perceive and respond to live theatre performances. ix THEYOUNGAUDIENCE Not just why and what,but also how When thinking about theatre for children, two kinds of questions that are generally posed ask either: whyshould children watch theatre? Orwhatkind of theatre should children watch? The thoughts implied by the question ‘why should children experience theatre?’ are somewhat pernicious. There is an off-hand, but entirely under- standable desire to respond with a pithy ‘why not?’ Another equally valid response might be to say, ‘for all the reasons adults should experience theatre.’ Like many pithy and pointed answers, these have an element of truth about them: does theatre for children really need to continually assert specific justifications for its very existence? For those with a commitment to delivering and supporting theatre for children and young people, the why question is almost redundant. As Tony Reekie, chief executive of the Imaginate in Edinburgh, puts it: I think generally you have to go, can we just take it as a given? That if children have got access to art and culture in its broadest sense, it is actually a good thing.(personal interview, 2006) This perception is passionately advocated by Philip Pullman in his manifesto stating the importance of ‘Theatre – the true key stage’. An extract is repro- duced later in this book. Pullman writes that ‘Children need to go to the theatre as much as they need to run about in the fresh air’ and continues: I’m not going to argue about this:I’m right.Children need art and music and literature; they need to go to art galleries and museums and theatres; they need to learn to play musical instruments and to act and to dance.They need these things so much that human rights legislation alone should ensure that they get them.(Pullman, 2004) Why should children watch theatre? Because, as Pullman suggests, if they do not ‘they perish on the inside’? Because, as asserted by Reekie, it is good for them? At one level such perceptions are not dissimilar to those around theatre for adults, which we often unconsciously position as good for us, often contrasting it with supposedly less worthy or more harmful engage- ment with popular culture or television. Such assertions contain implicit perceptions – about value, quality, benefit, childhood – that warrant further consideration. Is all theatre good for children, simply because it is theatre? Can theatre really be a right in the same way as shelter and kindness are defined as the universal rights of a child? Is it ever possible to think of theatre for children as theatre x
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