Dramatic playing beyond the theory of multiple intelligences

Abstract

Related to aspects of drama and theatre education, I search beyond the findings about symbolic play set forth by Dr Howard Gardner in Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. Despite the inspiration for and solidarity with arts educators that emanate from his theory, I sensed that it did not provide a full picture of the complex aesthetic and reflective skills manifested by young children in their playing. I refer to symbolic play as ‘play-drama’, viewing it as autonomous drama performed in the socio-cultural context of children's collective playing. The individual child-orientation in Gardner's developmental psychology study does not address the child-cultural dimension. Yet there is much to be learned for arts educators about the significance for the children of their cultural-aesthetic ways of being together. At the conclusion of the research, I view the capacity for expert dramatic playing as an executive capacity, a dramatic intelligence, which coordinates the deployment of the multiple artistic symbols that constitute play-drama. Children's skills go beyond what Gardner proposes as interpersonal and intrapersonal. The skills can be compared with those of a first-draft auteur, who masters the artistic positions and form-languages of a dramatist, dramaturg, director, actor, dancer/choreographer, storyteller, musician/composer, scenographer, props person, light designer and sound designer. In their aesthetic social life, play-ensembles enter and exit the drama-cultural mode on and off throughout the long hours in day-care.

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