The Theater of Games

Ordinary children’s games offer opportunities for a range of role-taking, group-building activities and their cultivation should be recognized as extensions of drama. Such games may be woven into workshops for reminding people how to play, how to explore spontaneity and the building of mutually supportive relationships. Though degrees and types of competition vary, from everybody wins to some win/lose, they’re still games as long as “it’s fun!”

Background

I had my Master's in Theater and after I was hired by the School District of Philadelphia to write a drama curriculum for elementary school teachers. I was working with inner-city children between the ages of 5-11, most of whom were sent to us because they were someone else's behavior problem. I very much wanted to help the kids create some kind of theater experience that they found meaningful, relevant, and, most importantly, fun. My single criterion for success was - if I walked out of the room for two minutes, would the kids be doing the same thing when I came back. It was really the only way I could think of to be sure that they were doing it for themselves, and not for a grade or for me. This was a very tough test for my understanding of what it meant to teach theater.

Nothing I tried really worked. They didn't warm-up to the warm-ups. They were too skittish for the skits. O, they were polite. And they'd do what I asked. But nothing clicked. Eventually, I unearthed my Viola Spolin book, Improvisations for the Theater, and tried some of her theater games. They were enthusiastic about the game part. But the moment I stepped out of the room, chaos ensued in all its many chaotic glories. Finally, out of desperation, I asked them if there were anything at all that they actually wanted to play together. "Yes," they chorused, "a game."

A game. not a theater game. Just a plain, silly kids game. "You know," they appended, "like Duck-Duck-Goose." "Duck-Duck-Goose"? That's the game where everyone sits in a circle and one kid, the Fox, taps each kid on the head and says "Duck" until she reaches the one kid she wants to get chased by. She calls the kid "Goose." The Goose stands up and gives chase. If tagged by the Goose before getting to the Goose's vacated seat, the Fox has to start over again. If not tagged, the kid that got, um, chosen is the new Fox. It struck me as a silly game, with really no relevance to the higher dramatic arts. But a deal is a deal. So we played. And after a while, I walked out, and after another while, I came back in. And they were still playing!

They even invited me to play. I was honored, but hesitant. I gave in. I played their game. Because it was theirs. And, yes, I had fun. And while I was having all that fun I began to be able to appreciate the game as more than a game. As, in fact, theater. For us potential Geese, it was all about acting like you wanted to get chosen (or not). Too enthusiastic or blasÈ, and you stay a Duck forever. For the Goose, it was about whom do you pick, and how hard do you run. Pick a friend who is faster than you? Pick someone you don’t like who is slower than you? Pick someone you want to like? Someone you want to like you?

And once the Goose is chosen, the game achieves something like high drama. The Goose jumps up and gives chase. Can the Fox make it back to the Goose’s home place and free herself of the curse of Foxhood? Will the Goose tag the Fox and damn it to yet another cycle of Foxiness? Unless, of course, the Goose doesn’t really want to catch the Fox. Unless the Goose actually wants to become Fox herself. But what if the Fox wants to remain Fox? What if she doesn’t run so fast, or stumbles, or has other sly strategies for maintaining her Foxiness yet another round.

As the drama unfolds, the rest of us Ducks, temporarily relieved of any further involvement, observe in relieved delight. Will the Fox make it? Is it a good chase? Do they run as if being Fox or Goose were as important as life itself? Or as if it were just plain silly?

The Dramaturgy of Games

I had to play it first. And when I did, I realized that the clearly silly game of Duck-Duck-Goose fully satisfied my criteria for a meaningful, kid-produced, kid-acted, kid-directed, theatrical experience. It was highly dramatic. It was something they actually wanted to do, actually could organize and become engaged with. Thus I began work on my “theater” curriculum and my lifelong exploration of the Theater of Games.

I soon discovered I was working within a global theater. Searching for more and more games, I found books of games from all over the world. The Games that are played out in the Theater of Games are in fact a form of literature – not written, maybe, not even oral, perhaps, but “enacted” – and thus handed down, from generation to generation, brother to brother, culture to culture. The literature of games can convey complex relationships, roles and consequences, issues of conflict and heroism.

The comic-tragedy of Duck-Duck-Goose holds a great fascination for young audiences, and is one of many variations on a theme of what one can only call the “Game of Tag”

1. Somebody's IT.
One person is singled out and assigned a role different from the undifferentiated many. This makes his actions so monstrously predictable that we call him IT, because in order to do what he's supposed to, he always has to do it.

2. IT Doesn't Want to Be IT.
In fact, IT’s goal is to make somebody else IT.

3. If IT Tags You (all it takes is contact)....

4. You're IT (Instantaneous reversal of roles).

Before most children play Tag, they find themselves fascinated into sheer delight by a group of tag-like “games” called “Monster.” Played by very small children - almost as soon as they are old enough to waddle – and large adults. Somebody is Monster–usually it's type-cast. That person, IT-like, chases everybody else. Everybody else runs and runs until the Monster catches them and eats, or tickles, them up. Then, everybody runs away again, and the Monster does his thing. The kids play the Monster to laughing exhaustion. And then wait to continue the drama the moment the Monster shows signs of readiness.

As a theater piece, it's as profound as it is entertaining. It describes a relationship between fear and its victims. It is an irreversible relationship. It is enforced equally by the pursued as well as the pursuer. By the time children begin playing tag, they are more interested in games where the role of authority is reversible, where the drama resides as much in the relationship as it does in the roles. Like any good drama, the game only works as long as there is conflict and as long as we are interested in that conflict. If IT never catches anyone, if the same person is always IT, the game is no fun. The drama of Tag is in the contest for position, even though the position is, in itself, untenable. The person in the role of IT is the Labeled One. The conflict centers on who gets to be what, how, and for how long. In some games, everyone wants to be the Labeled One. Everyone. At the same time, no one really wants to be labeled for very long. The drama reaches its peak and, once having become identified as IT, the whole game depends on IT on someone else. (Another variation of the game would occur if IT wanted to keep his position and get rid of his responsibility.)

And then within the Tag dramaturgy we find game theater pieces such as the one in which IT is given the power to decide when people can try to get him (Red Light). And the one where IT can even be able to tell people how they can move (Captain, May I?). And then there’s the tag game where IT has the power to decide when the chase is going to start (What's The Time, Mr. Wolf?), and the one where IT has to publicly declare his intended victims (Johnny, May I Cross the River?), and of course Duck Duck Goose. And he one where IT might even be able to get people to help him (British Bulldog). On the other hand, IT might not have as much territory as everybody else (Circle Tag), or people might have an easy escape (Freeze Tag), or even substitute other players (Squirrel in the Tree). Sometimes there are people who are neither IT or NOT IT, but who are there just to make it harder for IT (Cat And Mouse). Sometimes, IT can try to touch people with an object instead of his hand (Ball Tag). Sometimes, IT has an object that he is trying to put somewhere (Steal The Bacon; Football).

Then there are the versions of Tag when there is more than one IT - when there's us and them: Sometimes, if one of us gets tagged, we lose the whole game (Guard the King). Sometimes, when one of us gets tagged, we join the other team (Lemonade; Crows 'N Cranes). Sometimes, we and they both have the power of tagging, and if we get tagged by the wrong guys (them), we are out of the game until we get tagged by the right guys (Prisoner's Base; 5-10-ringo).

Though there is conflict between IT and NOT-IT, no score is being kept. Though you may really not want to be IT, and though you might find yourself being IT much, much longer than you bargained for, you never actually lose. Or, for that matter, win. After spending so much time on Tag, it almost comes as a shock to discover how different those very, very familiar games are from the games we have come to think of as “real” – the sports and contests that make up the world of educationally and commercially-supported fun, the win-lose, zero-sum.

In the dramaturgy of play, Tag is a type of game in a continuum of games. In my published-33-years-ago-no-longer-available Interplay Curriculum, I identified four different game types, looking at games not so much in terms of competition and cooperation, winning or losing, but rather in terms of the relationships they depicted. Tug-of-war, for example, went in the same volume as “Pit-a-Pat” (Pattycake) where nobody’s IT and everybody ultimately loses because it seemed to me that both games are really hard to quit – players are in a relationship to each other and have to somehow work it out to its conclusion. Tag and Hide and Seek went into the volume called “Locating” – because the focus is on finding oneself in relationship to the group. Two other volumes “Expressing” (more traditional theater games) and “Adjusting” (games that involved the changing of rules or goals). Each of these volumes had further classifications – how “active” the game was, how it was configured (individual, individual-group, individual-team, team-group, and team-team. Then there was a classification I called “locus of control.” Despite the intelligence and practicality of my classification scheme, almost as soon as the currucilum was printed I was forced to admit that there was yet a more effective, and more fun approach. Play a game. Any game will do. And then, when you have the opportunity, play a different game. And the game that turns out to be the most fun for everyone will also prove to be the most healing. So play that one again.

The Way of Games

For the next two years I explored this game/theater literature in depth. I played children’s games, and researched children’s games, and ultimately, my theater elementary school theater curriculum became a five-volume compilation of over a thousand children’s games. But it wasn’t until I started teaching the curriculum to teachers that I understood how close how healing the connections are between children’s games and the adult world, thanks to, of course, Duck-Duck-Goose.

In fact, it was my very first teachers’ meeting. And Duck-Duck-Goose was the very first game on my list of eight different games, each one demonstrating a different aspect of the “way of games:” team and individual, cooperative and competitive, active and quiet. The participants were so fascinated by the first game –and having so much fun– I simply couldn’t stop them. And they probably couldn’t have stopped themselves. Somehow, these very adult teachers found this really elementary children’s game so worthy of their collective and continued exploration, so relevant, so fun, that they just didn’t want to stop.

The more I played with adults, and the more groups I played with, the more deeply I appreciated the power of children’s games. I learned that, in less than a day, I could take a group of strangers, from virtually any background, and, playing children’s games, create a community – a responsive, supportive, open, attentive, Play Community. And in five days, these total strangers’d be all over each other like kittens!

I discovered in the great variety of children games, games that could help people explore different ways of relating to each other. I learned that my repertoire of children’s games gave me a kind of language of relationships – one that I could easily share and that could prove instrumental in helping people create truly supportive, mutually empowering relationships.

40 years later, I’m doing the same thing. Using the Theater of Games to help adults rediscover the experience of fun and community. Of course, given the vast dramaturgy of games, most of the games I play are the fun- and community-building kind. And, for the people I play with, the whole thing is a kind of healing, a kind of affirmation of the transforming power of the collective imagination.

For the theater artist, bringing the Theater of Games back to the theater is like bringing it home. Every game becomes an invitation to energize mind and body, to observe each other more carefully, to focus spontaneity, to respond more quickly. A drama coach or director who has a wide-enough repertoire of children’s games can use the Theater of Games not only to help build the actors’ abilities to work together, but also as a tool to help actors develop a kind of language for exploring the relationships between characters as demanded by the script. Hide and Seek is one kind of relationship, Tag, quite another. Tug-of-War, Patty Cake – each a path towards better defining the connections between characters and the words they are saying to each other.

For the practitioner of Applied Theater, the Theater of Games can become a living, multifunctional tool for developing healthy and healing relationships between individual and community, actor and company. As an invitation to participation, the Theater of Games offers a multitude of delightfully safe ways for people to interact with each other, physically, socially, and intellectually. When “fun’s the thing,” barriers between genders or ages, abilities or origins can be overcome almost instantly.

Having faith in the fun of it all is an important first step towards the effective use of children’s games in almost any setting – professional, therapeutic or recreational. But, as most first steps, it’s only the first. Here are some next:

Make and keep participation voluntary. The success of any game depends on the psychological and physical safety of its players. By keeping participation voluntary at all times, participants can safely regulate their level of involvement, almost regardless of level of trust. Sometimes, you can do this by establishing a “safe area” – an “out-of-bounds” place for people to retreat to as needed. Often, I find myself having to devote maybe a whole session to “quitting practice.” If people know it’s really all right to quit (well, maybe you have to give a warning before you opt out of being say the base of a human pyramid), then they know that everyone is playing only because they want to.
Let the games be the thing. Children’s games can reach very deep into the individual and collective adult psyche. They are full of lessons to be learned. When a game doesn’t work (a.k.a. isn’t fun), the lessons can all too easily become personal. The temptation to “process” begins to overpower the opportunity to enjoy each other. Here’s the key: it’s a lot easier to change the game than the people who are playing it. If a game doesn’t work, change it. Or play something else. “Play,” as they say, “on.”
Don’t let one game be the only thing. Even if people really like playing Duck-Duck-Goose, and are finding the drama so relevant that it becomes, in fact, the only game they play, having a choice of games is as important to the participant as it is to the group. It’s the difference between a “game community” and a “Play Community” – in the game community, it’s the game that ultimately decides who’s good enough to play. In the Play Community, it’s the players who decide if the game’s good enough. Start something else going with the people in the safe area. Even if you’re the only one there.
Invite invention. No game is as fun as the one the players are making up. No game is as well-adapted to the people you happen to be with, or where you happen to be, or what you happen to have to play with. The larger the shared game repertoire, the easier it is to find new ways to play together. It is a delicious circle.

The “best” games for creating this kind of collective sense of safety and openness tend to be those that are most intentionally designed to be fun. These games are often not even scored. Often there isn’t even a winner. These games are generally fun, and often make people laugh. I call them “Pointless Games” not only because no one keeps score, but also because we play them for purpose other than the fun they bring us.

I’ve used “fun” three times in the last paragraph. It is impossible to overstate how central the fun connection is to the healing quality of the game – as it is played and experienced. In fact, as you widen the group’s repertoire of games, fun turns out to be the best and most reliable criterion for finding just the right game for bringing the group to just the right place.

Most children’s games, and any of my Pointless Games can be welcome tools, any time you need to set the stage for almost any kind of theatrical or role-playing relationship people want to explore. But it is important to remember that when you play for “fun” games not only set the stage, but also become the stage – a stage where even the most fundamental of conflicts and the deepest of dramas can be played, with delight!