Vn019

Rehearsal

6/2/77


Last night Miriam asked me to come to kindergarten this morning to help out with a rehearsal of ‘Goldilocks.’ (see Logo Session 17, 5/1). When Miriam began showing an interest in plays (cf. Vignette 3), I mentioned to her that those years I spent at Yale were in the Drama School, that I had also done the kind of thing she was describing to me. I can not justify it by having impressed Miriam. She told me she believed I could be of help to her because I had a good book about plays for little people [A Dozen Little Plays, Parents’ Magazine Press 1965]. (She has read that book and finds its costuming of major interest; she asked if I would make for her Fox and Duck costumes. That book is a piece of flotsam remaining from a Master’s thesis project on ‘role rotation’ I once proposed and dropped.)

When I retreated from the housekeeping corner (as described in Vignette 18), Miriam’s intention to stage a rehearsal came to the fore. She asked her teacher if the children could go rehearse in the gym but that was not possible so her cast gathered near the clothes closet. Miriam brought out the scripts of ‘Goldilocks’ we had created the previous day at Logo. The potential cast was 6 in number: Miriam, Maria, Michelle, Elizabeth, Meg, and me. Given the dramatis personae of the 3 bears and Goldilocks, though I was immediately type cast as Daddy Bear I declined and elected myself to the audience. Then the squabbling began. Counting remaining noses, I was quick to suggest that we needed an “announcer.” Miriam declared she would do that and assumed directorship: “Meg, you be Daddy Bear.” (Meg is the largest child in the class). “No. I was Daddy Bear last time. I want to be Baby Bear.” “Michelle, you be Mommy Bear.” “No. I was the Mommy already.” (confer Vignette 18). To Elizabeth: “Here.” (as she gave her a script). When I asked Elizabeth what she thought of the script, she said it was nice but gave it to me because she can’t read. Maria made a cone-shaped hat of hers: “I’ll be the witch.” (a probable reference to the “Wicked Witch” game). Miriam tried to cast Maria as Goldilocks — Maria quit. Elizabeth and Michelle also refused the role. We were at this impasse in casting:

Miriam Self-declared narrator and director
Meg grudgingly willing to be Daddy Bear (and practicing growls)
Elizabeth both bears but neither willing to be the Mommy Bear
Michelle both bears but neither willing to be the Mommy Bear
Goldilocks persona non grata

The problem was solved by ignoring it. “We need costumes,” said Meg. I suggested shopping bags with head and arm-hole cut-outs as making good ‘bear suits.’ “No. Masks is what we need.” Seizing on this suggestion of Meg’s, the children got paper plates to make masks. My contribution was to mark the position of their fingers when each held a plate to her face and located her nose, eyes, and mouth. The children had finished cutting out the necessary holes and made the faces those of bears with brown crayon. Miriam was told there was no time for putting on the play before gym, but they could do it after. So the children closed off their activities and got ready for gym.

After gym, it was clean up time. Put away the wooden lollipops and those fruits Michelle had dumped out in Vignette 18. The children did not go further with their rehearsal that day and I left.

Relevance

This incident is important as an example of the cross fertilization of ideas from different domains of Miriam’s life: kindergarten and Logo. It also hints at some of the constraints: what good does it do a 6 year old to make a script if none of her friends can read it? This last question is obviously rhetorical — one may distinguish between a project’s being immediately effective in achieving a goal and its value in a person’s development.

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