Children and Drama compiled by Nellie McCaslin is a book, which encompasses works by many different authors. All of these articles seem to have a common theme, children in theater. By reviewing four articles we are able to come up with common methods amongst the authors. The four articles I chose to review were “Thoughts on Creative Process” by Virginia Tanner, “The Theater: A Side View” by Moses Goldberg, “From Literature to Drama to Life” by Nancy King, and “Drama-At the Core of the Curriculum” by John Hodgson. This essay will look at each piece individually and then bring them all together and see the similarities and differences throughout.

“The Theater: A Side View” by Moses Goldberg

Creative drama is defined in this article by the “process of guiding the child to create”(128). Moses defines this because theater is the product of creation therefore creative drama is subsequently considered theater on some level.

Moses uses the approach of laboratory research to further develop the ideas of creative drama. This approach would allow the researchers to contain the variables and manipulate them (129). That would then allow researchers to see ho

The author uses many approaches in their particular method of teaching dramatics. First and foremost it is the use of dance to teach dramatics, which has already been discussed. Secondly the author uses the children’s on experience to help them create dance sequences. On little girl on page 34 tells the story of how she had come up with and answer to a math problem but the teacher did not want to hear her answer. This discouraged the student from learning so her dance teacher must quickly find a way to counter the effects of that incident. She did so by using dance. Each child was asked to find a way to get from point A to point B by only using 8 counts of music. The trick was that they could only use three different types of movement. Each child was then given time to create on their own and then perform for the class. By allowing each child a chance to share his/her answer with the class the teacher has made learning once again fun. Thus allowing for the children to grow more confident in their abilities as students.

This article is unique in the fact that no spoken word is ever used in any of the examples of creativity. In dramatics a big part is the spoken word but by allowing the children to express without the use of words the teacher has allowed them to fine tune their unique abilities. Words may or may not come later in the approach that this teacher has taken to achieve creative growth in these children. For the time being however the lack of words has helped to strengthen the use of rhythmic expression. Rhythm is also another unique part of the method. Every dancer knows that rhythm is the key to any successful dance sequence. These children now too realize that rhythm makes things flow easier thus making rhythm a seemingly important part of their everyday life. The biggest strength of this piece was the use of a different art discipline to incorporate Creative Drama.

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