THE JOY OF RE-DISCOVERING THE WORLD
communitas and streaming in the performances made for babies
Children’s theatre – with adults
Following the thousand machinations of “black” or “toxic” pedagogy we successfully wean our children from the habit of following their inner commands dictated by their emotions. If we succeed in discouraging them from all individual initiatives, we can get after school lessons started. All that they might have learned happily and effectively following the impulse of their own senses will be learned without happiness and with little effectiveness under constraint. It would surely be better for our children if we could give up the everyday use of the poisonous traditions of “black” pedagogy, but why would it be attractive to us as well? What would we, poor present day adults gain from this, while we are worried about our own importance, suffering the educational aggression once used against us – now trembling in our guts to be passed on?
The answer in short is happiness! If we exploit the special possibility which being together with little children provides us, if we give space for discovering the wonders of the world together with them, we will also be enriched. With their help we can get back the ability the joy of recognition supplies against the usual, against routine. We might try, even if for a short time, putting subordination and power aside to consider babies our equals. If we start to believe in the possibility of two-way communication well before the little ones would gain the arsenal of verbalism, we will take part in a wonderful experience. Anyone can ascertain this in moving performances for children and also here and now, when it will be really the smallest sitting (standing, toddling, marveling and wondering, laughing or shouting) with us in the auditorium.
Are you comfortable in your seats...? Let’s start!
The embarrassing scene of an indignant, embarrassed parent leaving the auditorium with a frightened crying baby – often making whole rows stand up - is every theatre-maker’s nightmare when doing theatre for children. In these cases all action on the stage is overwritten by the ‘action’ in the stalls. It is difficult to start again, to continue playing with credible intensity. The box-office personal and ushers are on the defensive in anticipation – they told them but the mother could not leave the little one at home while taking the brothers and sisters to the theatre. And anyway, she said that she had been to the theatre wit the baby before and the baby did watch that performance all the way through without problems, and what’s more the baby enjoyed it.(Hm…, sure! We get the hint!)
No, we won’t negotiate any longer! - we say, and can already feel that we’ve just overreacted – and in defense of our productions, ourselves and our audience we will not let children under five into the auditorium! This is a pledge we can only keep feeling guilty and even then, only inconsistently.
We have expected our audience with a many-day non-stop family theatre program every autumn called the Kolibri festival right in front of out theatre building on Jókai square for the past fourteen years. Generation differences (conflicts) dissolve at such times. While the bigger children are watching performances, mothers with prams can freely move about with the smaller ones between the playground and the seats. There is no scandal, there is general contentment. Everyone can enjoy the program according to his/her own requirements, but still dissolving in the joyful feeling of being together. Our organizers are often plied with question by mothers of small children even during the season whether there are any performances they could take their children to? Let’s not get into for whom this theatre-going is more important, for the mother or the offspring. It also good for us if there is demand, and it’s bad for us if we cannot fulfill it. We would like everyone to have a good time in our theatre. While guessing the child’s age we contemplate what we can responsibly suggest, which performance of our repertory is the most suitable not to cause disappointment or an embarrassing situation, it being the first encounter with theatre. If there are so many arguments for playing for the smallest,
then why have no productions been made for babies in Hungary?
I’ll just give you one artistic – and one financial - reason. One is Obrascov’s axiom that children’s theatre is harmful under the age of six! The other, that the smallest and their mothers can only watch the performance in a small auditorium and in smaller numbers, and the playing time can be less than average, maximum 30 minutes. Well, this also makes lucrativness difficult to achieve. Okay, okay! These are excuses! If we believe that this new theatrical medium can be inspirational also for us, than we can rightly expect our maintainers and the politicians to be convincible that (also) the productions made for babies are worth support and subsidy!
Still, from what should we gather our strength, if not even public demand and continuous interest could convince us that is was worth making productions for this age-group as well?
Today in Hungary if somebody regularly plays for a child audience– but desires greater professional esteem – he makes a production for adults. Look, we represent such a high quality that we also do performances for adults! – the artists of children and puppet theatre longing for more recognition thus protest to themselves, to their bosses, and to their small audiences. In the meanwhile they forget that they can meet a quite big adult audience also in the auditoriums of performances for children. They are an integral part of our audience, bearing different functions (parent, grandparent, relative or the friend of the family, teacher accompanying children, fellow artist, theatre expert, school psychologist, etc.) and it depends solely on us, artists, to have them overwhelmed by the happenings on stage. Their integration is all the more easier because the adults who come to a performance with children are emotionally motivated to worriedly see how the performance effects the children and if they are satisfied, they themselves also relax and accept the collectiveness in becoming an equal member of the audience and an integral part of the performance. If they are not stressed by some retrograde pedagogical preconception, the success of the performance is just as much important for them as for the adult actors. Their presence makes it possible to talk about real rituals is case of children’s theatre as well, and what‘s more, it seems that in this day and age besides all liminoid theatre forms, only children’s theatre would give them a real liminal ritual experience, where adults form a community with children, the actors with the audience.
A professor of the University of Berlin, Sabine Schouten called my attention to the fact that the theatre staging done for babies often meets the requirement of performativity, a new notion widespread among philosophers in the nineties. She mentioned those performances as examples where the stage-setting does not produce the illusion of something, but the stage is transformed into something else by the collaboration of the participants/players. In these cases it does not make sense to ask why and for what aim these events occur. The artists don’t want you to recognize anything; the materials, the movements mean themselves, they are true in their own reality. The events are also references of themselves, thus the stage plot looks like a series of not repeatable, unique events. The performance cannot be played in the same manner twice due to the feedback between players and audience.
The performativity observed in children’s theatre also makes it possible for adults to sense the stunning novelties of the world waiting to be discovered, since if the events on stage are not illustrations but create an independent self-identical world – where we can share the joy of discovery too (!) – the adult and baby can cast a glance into the world constructed by theatre.
Can we except that in the name of artistic exploration and the search for the root of theatrical effect-mechanisms the new stratum of audience will be made up of babies and their mothers, supposedly inspiring the birth of interesting new theatrical forms? This thought seemed nonsense to us until now. And I cannot boast about having thought of the idea first, but luck still played into my hands this time.
When the Norwegian organizers first called me to say they were planning this co-operation in the framework of the EU project for the ages between 0 and 3, it thought I wasn’t hearing right. After meeting them in person and seeing the finished Norwegian performances I began to comprehend how important this baby-theatre co-operation must be for them. I succeeded in getting the creative team of Kolibri Theatre –Zoltán Bodnár, Bea Tisza, Károly Szívós and Ágnes Török - involved in the common work, as well as Yvette Bozsik, Attila Rácz and their artist companions. And as it usually happens, even here in Hungary there are more and more people interested in what the results of our project will be. When we were looking for partners for the tour preceding the Budapest Meeting, we were welcomed with interest and joy by the directors of theatres and puppet theatres in the country. They were happy that we would also show the already finished productions to the audience of our city. Is it possible that toddler’s theatre is “in the air”? The interest, the several months of working together, the revelation-like experiences of audience-reaction during the rehearsals in theatres and day-nurseries urge us to re-think some basic questions concerning general characteristics of theatre, of theatre for babies and children. We’ve also asked professionals for help, but have put the question to ourselves as well: what is happening in the auditorium during performances? What aspects determine the reception of our work?
Konrad Lorenz and ritualisation
As (…) Sir Julian Huxley (…) recognized the significance of the interesting process which we call ritualisation today, he also used this word (…) for phenomena that occur in the phylogeny of humans and animals, and also for those only occurring in the development of human culture. The important and essential possibility for comparison of the two is contained in the fact that behavior or physical traits which were originally developed for the ensuring of survival of a species may become symbols that operate as a sign for the individuals of the species in their understanding of each other”/(Vorvort) Otto Koenig: Kultur und Verhaltensforschung, 1970, 7-8./.
The opposite direction of the ontogenetic development of Mickey Mouse in Disney films
1. The change of physical traits of humans in the course of becoming adults
The typical changes of form that occur during the growth of a human have inspired a significant literature of biology, writes Stephen Jay Gould, a professor at Harvard University, specialist in science in his article entitled “Biological respect to Mickey Mouse”. As it is the embryo’s head that develops first and grows faster than the leg part (technically speaking this is called antero-posterior gradient), the relatively big head of an infant is connected to a medium size body and small feet. Later in the process of growth this gradient changes to the contrary when the leg part gets ahead of the head in terms of growth. The head continues growing but a lot slower than other parts of the body, thus the relative size of the head diminishes. In the course of the growth of a human, a number of changes occur on the head itself. The skulls of our embryos hardly differ from that of a chimpanzee. And the change in shape follows the same route during the growth: the fornix of the skull grows relatively smaller, as after birth the brain grows a lot slower than the body, while our jaws also grow more or less continuously. But while these changes are quite explicit in the case of chimpanzees and can result in a significantly different adult considering the form of the infant, we proceed a lot slower on this road and don’t even approach the amount of change they undergo. Still, we change enough for there to be a significant difference between infants and adults, even though the change in us is a lot less than what we can observe in the case of chimps and other primates.
After the age of three the brain grows very slowly and the small child’s round skull gives over to the more stretched form of adult skulls with a lower forehead. The eyes hardly grow at all, and their relative size diminishes abruptly. The jaw, however, gets bigger and bigger. Children, compared to adults, have bigger heads and eyes, smaller and thicker lower limbs and feet. All in all, the adult skull is more monkey-like.
In one of his most famous articles Konrad Lorenz proves that the difference of characteristic differences between small children and adults are used by humans as important warnings for behavior. He believes that the characteristic traits of youth start the “hereditary mechanism” of caring in adult people. If we see a baby-formed living creature, we are flooded by an involuntary wave of disarming tenderness. The adaptive value of this answer cannot be doubted, as we have to nourish our infants. Our deduction, that we consider the tender reaction of adults to the outward form of small children generally characteristic of mankind, is independent of whether we had inherited this inclination directly from our primate ancestors – as Konrad Lorenz thinks –, or it can be simply derived from firsthand experience with our infants and correlates to our evolutional ability of connecting emotional threads to certain learned signs. Our statement is also supported by the main thesis of Lorenz’s article, according to which we do not react to the whole or the form (Gestalt), but the reasons are elicited from us by a series of characteristic traits. This reasoning supports the evolutional identity between the behavior of humans and other vertebral animals. (We can learn from Lorenz’s 1950 article (Ganzheit und Teil in der tierischen und menschlichen Gemeinschaft) that many birds often react to abstract forms rather than shape and figure.)
The way Disney changed the proportion and look of the figure of Mickey Mouse film by film in the span of fifty years, thus changing its character traits as well, can be interpreted in this context.
National symbols – and Mickey Mouse represents the USA all over the world – are not usually changed on a whim. Market researchers (especially in the doll business) have spent significant amount of time and energy to find out what figures seem nice and friendly to people.
Biologists have also spent a lot of time examining similar questions among a series of animals. The have observed that a lot of animals – for reasons absolutely irrelevant to the induction of human emotions – have common traits with human babies that cannot be found in human adults. Namely, the big eyes, the bulging forehead, and the retracting chin. We are attracted to these animals; we coddle them as pets and admire them in the wild. But we reject their small-eyed, long muzzled relatives, even though those may be even more loving companions and could claim our admiration with more reason. To put it short: the answer we formulated for our own infants deceives us when we transfer our reactions to the same traits even when they are embodied by a different animal.
Humans have tender feelings toward animals which have youthful traits: big eyes, dome-like head, recessive chin (left hand column). The small-eyed, long muzzled animals (right hand column) produce the opposite effect. (Konrad Lorenz: Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1971)
These observations may answer the metamorphosis Mickey Mouse’s figure had gone through along the years. Its adult proportions were more and more substituted for infant proportions. The aim at popularity turned the ontogenetic route around and developed the character from an adult into an infant.
Mickey’s evolution in 50 years (from left to right). As Mickey starts behaving more and more honestly during the years, its appearance also becomes more youthful. The measurements done in the three phases of change showed relatively bigger eyes and a larger skull – these are all traits of youth. (©Walt Disney Productions)
Disney’s character followed Mickey Mouse in their struggle for love and sympathy. Donald Duck also put on a more youthful shape, while the wicked figures of the cartoons put on more and more adult traits.
2. The development of the “hydrocephalic” attitude
The moral of Mickey Mouse’s slow transformation met conscious and – a lot of – instinctive followers all over the world. Figures having a hydrocephalic look invaded the illustrated storybooks as well as cartoons, the creators of which didn’t shrink back from the uncritical copying of Disney, envying his international success. It was the same kind of fad as the streamlined kitsch-wave of the sixties when everything from toilet paper holder to corkscrew was shaped to the same drop form by the designers hoping for greater financial success. They are the ones who would use or abuse the infant proportions in favor of consumption-results if they thought it was needed.
Recently an international company which produces female dress-up dolls with adult shapes has turned to the hydrocephalic trick, as they realized that interest towards their dolls was diminishing. They started producing their classic dolls with bigger heads. Success was inevitable as the little girls practicing adult female roles on the dolls also had the opportunity of pampering and loving their big-headed dolls in a motherly way while dressing them up as grown women. It is not by chance that these dolls are most popular among teenagers, as they are the ones who perceive themselves as big girls in one instance and a little girl in need of pampering in the next.
Infant–projection unleashes its “beneficial” effects in different areas through our unconscious. This condescending hydrocephalic attitude which abuses our reflexes is what impedes the acceptance and spreading of modern views concerning infant behavior and the possibilities of communication with them. The trick which helps marketing personal and designers get round us so easily seems too simple and it is degrading to everyone who wants to seriously rethink the notions concerning infants. Incidentally, even the wave of love that overflows us at the sight of an infant, as if a “button had been pushed”, that is, the very strength of our feelings can prevent us from really perceiving the infants’ personality, their unique characteristics, and from sensing how important interpersonal communication is from the very first moment on, in the way it is most acceptable for children. Of course the mothers have always been in possession of this knowledge, but they too are isolated from a bigger group of society in this period, together with their infants, thus remaining alone with their realizations. Theatre also contributes to this isolation when it banns mothers with small children from its performances! For this view to change we have to reinterpret our requirement for the theatre for children radically and as soon as possible!
The aspects of Victor Turner’s oeuvre on comparative symbology as regards children’s theatre
In this phrase “symbology” means the study and interpretation of symbols, while “comparative” only suggest that this science also uses the method of comparison.
In Victor Turner’s 1969 work entitled “The Ritual Process” we read of observations based on the analysis of the habits of the Ndembu tribe in Zambia, which help everyone in the deeper understanding of the rituals of theatre. During the analysis of the habits connected to the cyclic change of nature or to the change in the status of certain people, he observed the liminal (threshold) situation prevalent in tribal societies in which the three phases of the ritual of transition can be clearly defined. These are: separation, transition and integration. In the theatrical behavior – i.e. liminoid (threshold) rituals - of industrial and post-industrial societies these three phases can be well grasped, in performances for adults as well as for children. We can also come to fruitful conclusions researching the parallels of children’s theatre with the above mentioned phases; still, out of the notions of cultural anthropologist Victor Turner my curiosity was most aroused by the description of the rite of status-inversion mostly characteristic of the liminal phase. It wasn’t until I read it that I felt that the notions of cultural anthropology give us a new point of view, possibilities for new approaches for all of us in the better understanding and explanation of the phenomena experienced during performances for children.
During the apo celebrations of the North Ashant ethnic group in Ghana, which take place during the 8 days directly preceding tekiman New Year starting on 18 April (first described by the Dutch historian Bosman in 1705), everyone can talk about the faults, wickedness and cheating of their superiors with impunity. In the Zulu nomkubulwana celebration analyzed by Max Gluckman in 1954, which is held when the crops start growing, women get the dominant role, while the men behave as if subjugated. During the holí rituals in India, an analysis of which was published by Professor McKim Marriott in 1966, in a celebration connected to a Krisna ritual, the women beat the shins of the wealthiest Brahman and Djat/Ghat farmers if they find them on the streets. Often the most ferocious beater are the wives of lower caste workers, craftsmen and servants who are at the same time lovers or housekeepers of the victims.
What is common in these rituals? The inversion of status during the celebrations frees the people of their own status and also causes a temporary equilibration of social differences. Those above have to bow in the face of humiliation; while the submissive ones are raised by direct speech, a privilege freely exercised as a way of getting rid of accumulated aggression. If the ritual is connected to a yearly cycle, this makes it possible for the participants to get rid of all their bad feelings that were accumulated in structural relations in the previous year. They ensure that the bad deeds – by which usually high ranking people do wrong to lower ranking ones – come out into the open. And the perpetrators of these deeds refrain from taking revenge on the ones who had just reproached them for their bad deeds. Professor Marriott writes about the holi ritual: “Here the village population’s interpersonal relations based on love, but being very different, often waning … all suddenly step out of their narrow channels due to the sudden and simultaneous increasing of intensity. The usual separation and indifference of the isolated families and castes is flooded by a one-sided feeling of love without boundaries. This liberated libido overflows all hierarchical order of age, sex, caste, wealth and power … Under Krisna’s charitable supervision every person plays and experiences, if only for a moment, the role of his opponent; the obliging wife that of the overbearing husband, and the other way around, the rapist that of the raped, the servant that of the master, the enemy that of the friend, the youth kept well in hand the role of the leaders of the community. The anthropologist undertaking the observation was given the role of a dumb farmer. Every participant takes on the roles of the other people who are in relation to them, thus everyone can learn to play their own role in a different way, having a better understanding of it, maybe having more good will, maybe mutual love.”
The blissful experience of temporary equality is a trait of the state called communitas by Turner. The anti-structure experienced in liminality, by the end of the process, in the phase of integration results in the strengthening of the original structure. The rituals of status-inversion in the tribal and farming societies ensure the constancy of the structure by getting rid of the accumulated tension.
How do we, the adults of modern age, experience the ritual of status inversion in a performance for children?
The moment we cross the threshold of the theatre, the child under our supervision turns from a subjugated being into a spectator, a person all adult actors, stagehands, auditorium and box office staff, parents and teachers – the people who in all other circumstances are “superiors” of the child just by the very nature of them being adults - want to please. When the lights go down the child has the same status as the adults, because the taboos of theatre defend him – e.g. the accompanying adult cannot rebuke him without consequence –, if he accepts one or two rules; not to shout when you’re not allowed to, or to shout when the performance urges you to. Not even the adult spectator can make a decision about which attitude to chose now: will the self-restriction of ‘peeping’ theatre or the rules of interactive theatre be valid? The rules of theatre apply to the adults just as they do to the children. This can be especially uncomfortable for the adults with interaction, but this discomfort can nowadays find the spectator also in performances for adults. Adults, for the duration of the performance, have to give up the role of being omnipotent and infallible. The performance’s elements of effect are a challenge to them also; they can experience unexpected surprises during the play. They can only voice their opinion as any other audience member. The taboos of theatre apply to them, too. This isn’t bad, what’s more, it can be a pleasant and liberating experience for a normal adult. By giving up their status of power, the parents can also experience the floating, blissful state of communitas, the joy of streaming overflowing the auditorium. The “degraded” adult and the “raised” child are also enriched by a lot of new realizations about each other in this “adjunct” situation. They get to know a new personality of the other one, which is enchanted by playing, something they didn’t or hardly had a chance to see, thus after the performance the habitual child-parent or child-teacher relationship is deepened and enriched.
Through the reactions of the infants to a theatrical production made especially for them, we, the adults, can become part of a kind of ritual process only the members of tribal societies had possibility to experience. In our day and age, in the centuries following industrial revolution, playing and celebrations have clearly been restricted to within the boundaries of free-time as opposed to working, which by the very juxtaposition of the two things suggests the useless frivolity of the former. In farming societies on average 150 holidays were celebrated. These celebrations all served the interest of the community, reflected the values of the community. The games and rituals also followed higher aims. The games infants play are also part of the work through which the world becomes understandable for us. These games are very serious! In the theatre, in celebration-like conditions we can also become part of this ritual, we can make such discoveries together that would draw us into a circuit of happy levitation both as artists and people sitting among the audience.
Crumbs and experiences; the first fruits of common work.
The smallest ones know nothing of theatrical conventions. Of course it can work without making them conscious of it, as the mothers with their infants on their lap are all turning towards the stage, being full of expectation. This behavior influences the children. We can also decide to only let the little ones into the auditorium at the very last moment, so boredom and expectation would not break their attention too soon. However conventional the space (be it even the least suitable guckkasten-theatre), the free movement between stage and audience has to be ensured. Nothing may impede to safe return of the little toddlers. (For example too strong a light or a dark auditorium.) If what they see is attractive, they go closer, imitate what they see there, and if they are frightened, they run back to their mothers. The events on stage are perceived by the children as real happenings. Events as the mere illustration of things already known are uninteresting. What they see has to gather some importance as something that is interesting in itself during the performance. The dynamics of the succession of stage events gives the material, the arch and the culminating points of the performance.
The theatre for infants also shows similar ambitions to repetitive compositions, as the repeated elements at this age are almost indispensable. Repetition makes the performance more friendly and familiar, thus making the production - and life through it – comprehendible and accessible as an experience.
It is important to know that at the infant stage children cannot yet be separated from their mother or caretaker. Adult and child are inseparable in the theatre as well. Their being together makes it possible for us to view this kind of performance as a special form of theatrical ritual. The events on stage have to have an effect on the adults as well. Besides, I have not seen as many happy mothers in theatre auditoriums as during these productions. The realization that theatre actually had a good influence on the little ones spread among them. While the mothers list the ways the playing affected their children, what they perceived, when and how the little ones reacted, these recognitions become their own experiences. Their empathy is transformed into their own feelings, and the child’s happiness liberates the mother too. Theatre gives them a chance of being together happily in a period when they are usually characterized by the syndrome called post-partum blues caused by their isolation and the growing number of duties.
The children pay attention to each other as well. The sounds of excitement, of fear or laughter pass through them as it usually happens with ‘real’ audiences. Norwegian performers have said that they had been to a lot of places all over the world and they usually had success because their performances were understood everywhere. (Attention! Here understanding is not connected to verbal means, we can rather define it as the active experiencing of stage events. Now we are really down to the roots of theatrical effect-mechanisms!) The actors can play with the best efficiency if the children in the auditorium are more or less the same age. In this period even one or two months can make a difference, not to mention differences that amount to years. A child that reacts differently or at a different time from the others can break the attention span of the others, and draws them away from the performance. (This feeling can be familiar to adult theatre-goers as well. If we happen to sit next to a well-informed audience member or a relative who reacts to the performance with loud sensations, we have a good chance of being left out of the enjoyment of the play.) This is why we usually ask that children older than four are not brought among the younger ones, because the older ones, with their faster reactions do not make it possible for the younger ones to contemplate and receive things undisturbed. (Of course we still have to strive not to create stupid rules that are impossible to implement and which suggest the separation of families!)
The three-year collaboration and rehearsal process insured by the program “Glitterbird – art for the very young” is a refreshing opportunity for all Hungarian participants. In the last year we had three open rehearsals asking for the opinion of a specialist of day-nursery education, a psychologist, a brain researcher and a music therapist about their impressions. The Budapest Meeting creates the possibility of incorporating the experience of the artists of partner countries into our own work in the remaining time. We hope the present meeting helps their work too and that we can give an account of what we learned to each other and to the French public at our closing program in Paris. Maybe it is not an immodest hope either, that through this collaboration we might gain the right and opportunity of theatre-going for infants and their mothers, and that our example may inspire more talented artists to further experiment with the theatre for children and infants. To do some work of discovery!
