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Theatre for Early Years Practices and Play in Early Childhood Development

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Theatre for Early Years Practices and Play in Early Childhood Development Theatre for Early Years practices and play in early childhood development Liana Dobrica Master Thesis Theatre Studies First reader: dhr. dr. C. Dieleman Second reader: dhr. dr. Peter Eversmann University of Amsterdam 2 Contents List of acronyms ......................................................................................... 3 1. Intr oduction 4 2. Early childhood development and TEY……………………………………..6 2.1 Cultural and historical influences in defining “child” and “childhood” . 6 2.2 Early childhood development ............................................................... 9 2.3 Piaget’s theory of cognitive development…………………………………...9 2.4. TEY and child development ............................................................... 11 2.5. A complex audience .......................................................................... 12 2.6 The parents ........................................................................................ 14 3 . TEY emergence, development and popularity 17 3.1 Justification ......................................................................................... 17 3.2 Over 40 years of TEY history .............................................................. 17 3.3 Theoretical framework in the making ................................................. 19 3.4 Social and scientific drivers which foster the emergence of TEY ....... 22 3.5 Food for thought ................................................................................. 24 4.The richness of TEY practices 25 4.1 Common artistic expression transcending borders ............................ 25 4.2 The performers-facilitators ................................................................. 27 4.3 The performance ................................................................................ 28 4.4 Quality in reference to TEY ................................................................. 29 4.5 Decoding the performance ................................................................. 30 4.5.1 Impact upon the infant audience .................................................... 31 4.5.2 Impact upon the parent-child relationship ...................................... 33 4.6 The future of TEY ................................................................................ 33 4.6.1 The value of offline interaction in a digitalized world ................ 33 4.6.2 A multidimensional caregiving relation parents children ......... 35 5 . TEY in practice: Three case studies from three countries 37 Case study 1. “Potjesman”/“Jarman” ........................................................ 40 Case study 2. “Pernuta Somnoroasă”/ “The Sleepy Pillow” ...................... 55 Case study 3. “Inside Out”/ ”Binnenstebuiten”/ “Dedans-dehors" ..... 68 6 . Conclusion 78 Bibliography 82 Image sources 87 Annex 1.1. Transcription Interview with Catalina Hetel (26.05.2017) ........ 1 Annex 1.2. Transcription Interview with Catalina Hetel (5.06.2017) .......... 1 Annex 2. Interview with Carmen Palcu-Adam (24.02.2017) ....................... 1 3 Annex 3. Transcription interview with Jasmin Haslar (26.05.2017) ............ 1 Annex 4. Interview iota (21.02.2018) ......................................................... 1 List of acronyms APP American Academy of Pediatrics ASSITEJ International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People ECEC/ECE Early Childhood Education and Care/Early Childhood Education ECE Early Childhood education ITYARN International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network TEY Theatre for Early Years TVY Theatre for the Very Young TYA Theatre for Young Audiences 4 TEY practices and play in early childhood development 1.Introduction The purpose of this research is to examine the burgeoning field of Theatre for Early Years (theatre for babies and toddlers, up to 3 years old) or TEY in short, by taking a look at a variety of practices employed by professionals who are operating in the field and interrogating those practices and their objectives towards the notions of play advanced in developmental psychology. The research question is whether TEY practices endorse the natural course of the child’s socio-emotional development as enabled by play given the fact that content and context interfere with the age of children. The first steps should clarify: what is Theatre for Early Years actually? Which are the audiences that it caters to? Why is TEY enjoying a high level of popularity at this point in time? Which are the drivers for its development? Studying the whole process, it ensued that to look at play in TEY, means to look at play from the perspective of the content, the context and the performers. The term performer refers to those who are on stage and deliver the performance. A lot of the time in TEY, the person/people, who act as director(s), by thinking out, creating, and developing the performance is/are also performer(s). Hence, the term practitioner will be used as an umbrella term when referring to anyone involved in the making of the performance, as either performer, maker or both. The performers are looked at as developers and facilitators of the performance, and as such, as the initiators of the opportunity for play during the performance. The activity of play is considered from the multiple ways in which it takes place: in the making/rehearsing period, the practitioners develop the performance through play (as opposed to rehearsing a script in the case of adult theatre). Then the performers ‘’perform’’, which means they essentially engage in play on stage in front of the spectators, and/or they play with the child spectators, or they just leave the stage for the spectators to play. All these modes of play interact and influence each other and can occur simultaneously. Another important participant in the process are the parents, who partake in this convention alongside their children. This opens up another sub- question: what is the parents’ role in the experience and how does it impact them? Due to its relatively novel character, TEY needs a more robust body of theoretical work. The results of the intensive bibliographical investigation 5 resulted for a large part from two studies, which I will refer to throughout the research. Firstly, TEY researcher Ben Fletcher-Watson’s postgraduate thesis “More like a poem than a play: towards a dramaturgy of performing arts for early years”, and secondly, the book Theatre, Youth and Culture. A Critical and Historical Exploration by Theatre Studies academic Manon van de Water. The studies highlight the need to study TEY and its characteristics. For this reason, as well as its interdisciplinary nature, my research on TEY will draw upon theories from other fields; this explains the present endeavor to study TEY practices by positioning them in relation to theories from developmental psychology. As a personal contribution to this research, I incorporated the findings resulted from my contact with the situation of TEY in Romania, Belgium and the Netherlands, looking at work developed by three different platforms in these countries. These examples will enable me to investigate how particular practices employed in the field of TEY champion, support, expand and challenge the insights gained from developmental psychology theories on play in early childhood. The case studies consist of the following companies and people: TYA theatre Ion Creanga from Romania, whereby I had interviews and talks with TEY practitioners Catalina Hetel, Voicu Hetel, and Carmen Palcu Adam; Iota theatre from Belgium, represented by the respondents Lieven Bayens and Diane Batens (TEY practitioners, founders of Iota theatre); interviewee Jasmin Hasler, TEY artist in residence at TEY platform 2turvenhoog in the Netherlands. The structure of the thesis reflects the approach. As such, Chapter 2 is concerned with the notion of early childhood development and its connection to the field of TEY, using it as an entrance point towards TEY by looking at the cognitive capacities of TEY audiences. Chapter 3 traces the emergence and development of TEY as a field in its own right, by looking at the secondary literature on the topic, and drawing connections between TEY and the socio-cultural circumstances of its evolution. Chapter 4 dissects the means of expression and the characteristics of TEY performances, paying attention to its effects upon children and parents alike, as well as contextualizing TEY in the framework of other contemporary societal influences upon childrearing. Chapter 5 focuses on the case studies by analyzing three different examples of TEY practitices in Europe and by comparing them. Chapter 6 represents the conclusion, the reflection upon the findings and the limitations of the research, as well as suggestions for further research. The methodology is comprised of various elements. Sources such as books and scientific articles from the field of psychology were employed for the parts of the research which dealt with early childhood development. Further on, the literature review was limited to the relatively few academic sources in the field and accompanied by TEY researchers’ reflections within the Small Size international TEY organization. For the case studies, the main techniques employed were participative observation, Skype and written interviews, as well as informal talks and email correspondence with the respondents and some of their colleagues. 6 2. Early childhood development and TEY In order to understand the connections between TEY practices and early childhood development, it is necessary
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