Mrs. Braucher recommends for story-playing the following stories, some of which lend themselves to a more permanent form of acting:

We come now to the performing of memorized plays by adolescent young people. Before adolescence memorizing is of little value in dramatic performance, unless it be of poems to be acted, because it tends to hamper the freedom of original speech and action. Here Frederica Beard’s sensible statement is memorable: “The dramatic instinct is not utilized primarily by the seeing of plays, but by self-expression in the acting out of plays suitable to a particular age.” It is the children who have been surfeited by the drama and the moving-picture show who regard dramatic play as tiresome. Those who are leading in the Junior Drama League, instead of encouraging theater-going among children, are strongest in their insistence that children ought to be kept from the playhouses. Neither is it believed that the development of dramatic expression among children is likely to increase the number of young who go into that profession.

Development through patient drill of some capacity in the taking of parts, on the other hand, tends to help a child to discriminate between good and poor acting, and to appreciate all his life that which is truly fine in this great and ancient art. But the greatest difference between the spirit of the mother or teacher who coaches some young people in their amateur plays and the teacher of dramatic art is that the latter works almost entirely to specialize the actor for his business and art of acting, while the leader of amateurs is concerned chiefly with the results of the acting in developing the characters of the children through this exercise of the dramatic instinct.

Something more than the dramatic instinct may be exercised through these amateur home plays. One writer describes how once he started out with a group of young folks to give a pantomime of Hiawatha. The boys were to do the acting while he read part of the poem aloud. This seemed to be such an easy thing to do that they had not planned to have the preparations last more than a month, but they took all winter. The boys got so interested in making the costumes and painting the scenery that they worked enthusiastically week after week in doing so. They made their costumes out of brown cambric or denim, which was easily fringed. Their moccasins were made of the same material, and beads were liberally used on the moccasins and the bracelets. “Scalps” were made of old switches of false hair, and the blades of the tomahawks were very realistic with red paint. They secured old Christmas trees from the public gardens, they set up a tent of their own devising, they had a camp fire, lighted by red electric bulbs, they had scenery of their own painting and they even had a moon of their own which rose more or less spasmodically.

When the boys put on their warpaint and performed their dance, to an Indian chant of their own invention, under red fire, they were positively gruesome, and the dramatic climax of Hiawatha’s wedding was glorious in the extreme. Evidently, in these exercises it was not the dramatic instinct alone that counted, though that was central throughout, but the gang spirit was behind it all, and the handicraft instinct became involved, while music, art and the love of literature all found their place.

Miss Cora Mel Patten, who has had a varied experience in coaching young people in connection with the playgrounds and social centers of Chicago, advises that for the best results the leader should deal only with small groups. She believes that intensive work carried on patiently and for a long time with a moderate-sized dramatic club is more effective than the ambitious endeavor to deal with a large company. As in all social work that amounts to anything, it seems better to get somewhere with a few than merely to start with the many. In the small group the mob spirit is entirely absent, and if it be a selected company, everybody is in earnest. These statements suggest that the pageant, which is becoming so popular, is worth while for its patriotic and inspirational rather than its dramatic opportunities.

Dramatized Work

The chief difference between work and play to a child seems to be that in work a definite creative result is kept in mind, so that the end, rather than the means, is the central purpose. In play the means is everything and the end is a matter of indifference. Until the child is old enough to become something of a creator and inventor he does not instinctively perform much work. Sometimes before that period arrives, however, it is possible to interest him in profitable tasks if he can engage in them with his imagination; and all through childhood, and, indeed, all through life, imagination is the Shekinah that leads the host of toil through its wilderness toward the promised land.

A pleasant device to encourage young children to work is to denominate them as “soldiers,” “watchmen,” or “little partners.” The addition of a paper cap or a wooden sword or a policeman’s club will carry many a small youngster through a task which would otherwise seem intolerable. One mother has strengthened her family discipline by assigning each of her children in turn to be “the captain of the day,” giving each in turn special privileges and the responsibility of keeping the other children in order. If a boy or girl can only turn something into something else more to his liking, he will develop considerable industry. If the woodpile and the dishpan can be utilized as enemies to be destroyed and the untidy room as a province to conquer, these tasks are fulfilled with a complete, though furious, equanimity.