Igniting Wonder: Plays for Preschoolers

PREFACE

vii PREFACE Amy Susman-Stillman heatre arts are implicitly linked with quality early childhood practices and positive developmental outcomes. As codirector of CEED, the Center for Early Education and Development at the University of Minnesota, I have been advising Children’s Theatre Company for the past four years as CTC develops its early childhood theatre arts initiative, Ready for Life. It is an honor and a privilege to write the preface to Igniting Wonder, which gathers together plays produced at CTC specifically for very young audiences. As we engaged in our work, I learned a great deal about theatre arts for young children. I recognized the natural connection between developmental psychology and theatre arts, which I had not understood quite as clearly until I embarked on this project. Of course, reflecting back with twenty–twenty vision, the connection now seems obvious. Knowing how children grow and change, and what they are capable of knowing, doing, and understanding, is critical to introducing theatre arts and its skills to young children and to creating work that appropriately matches and scaffolds their creative , cognitive, and social development. At the same time, understanding how theatre arts and its practices affect children’s creative, cognitive, and social development can enrich our understanding of how those competencies evolve. T viii Preface Young children are hardwired to explore their world through social dramatic play; as they play, they negotiate characters, roles, story arcs, experiences, and props. Sociodramatic play is linked to creativity, social competence, and executive function as well as to more traditional school readiness outcomes, such as literacy. In fact, the growing recognition of executive function as key to early learning , and research and programmatic work to promote it, centers on the role of sociodramatic play. My continuing observation from both research and practice experience is that the overlap between theatre arts and early childhood practices runs deep. I have come to understand that while our disciplinary languages are different, we are working to achieve common goals: that children have skills of self-expression, of social relationships and community, and of language and communication; and are confident, curious, and engaged. These, I must note, are goals shared by society as a whole, as they are also a large part of what children need to know and do to be ready for elementary school and for success in life. Creativity and wonder are hallmarks of early childhood development. The sense of curiosity and incredulity that young children bring to their explorations of the world around them inspires adults to want to promote and enhance it. Young children are unquestionably unique in the ways in which they approach the world, process information about it, and engage in it. As a society we are becoming more aware of the distinct significance of this period of development. We now know, from both theory and evidence, that the early years of life are foundational, and children’s early experiences indelibly shape their development. It is therefore incumbent on us to ensure that we provide young children with opportunities that stimulate and support their development. This recognition makes CTC’s efforts to use professional theatre experiences as a catalyst to support young children’s socialemotional , cognitive, and creative development groundbreaking and important. The genesis of the early childhood initiative occurred as theatre artists and staff were inspired by the beauty and rigor of work for the very young by European colleagues (Christer Dahl of Preface ix Dockteatern Tittut and others) and became aware that very little such work was being generated in the United States. They saw an opportunity to use theatre arts to support young children’s development and acknowledged that to do so they would need to grow and develop the field of early childhood theatre arts and create new, meaningful work for young children. I have the deepest respect for the thoughtfulness, intentionality , and care that characterizes CTC’s work on this initiative. CTC has taken on an important challenge and produces high-quality opportunities for young children in response to that challenge. Working with young children is not necessarily instinctive or simple, nor is creating new work for them. CTC’s respect for young children as early learners and theatre artists is noteworthy: it recognized the need to first understand this audience—children’s interests, abilities , limitations, and what appeals to them—and then focused on how to...