The Art of Play

It turned out to be prophetic that Peter Pan was one of my favorite childhood stories. Watching my father pay bills at the dining table, I found myself humming “I won’t grow up…” Like any healthy red-blooded child, I loved to play and didn’t understand why adults had to be so boring. Some part of me was determined never to become one.

 

And some part of me succeeded! I ended up with a life’s work that paid me for playing clapping games with children! Of course, I need that money to pay the bills, discovered that if all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, there also was a great delight to be found in work well done. And that there were other great perks to being a grown-up— the freedom to set my own bedtime and eat ice cream whenever I wanted and the pleasure of being a responsible father, grandfather, teacher, citizen. But none of that meant having to send my playful self down to some locked closet in my inner landscape. So I never did.

 

My playful two weeks with children from 5 to 17-years-old at the Taiwan American School culminated yesterday in a most delightful performance with the 5^th graders— some 150 of them!— and the high school jazz band. I was nervous about the children’s association with a concert as a serious affair, with every note and gesture expected to be perfect and the corresponding stress, anxiety and stiffness that comes with that. My hope was to encourage them to be 100% children and bring their infectious playful spirit to the stage, combined with their maturing music and dance skills so that the play was not random, but focused and artful. And they did! 

 

Each of the four groups had their moment of sheer joy publicly shared. The Step Back Baby people having so much fun enacting the “Home Alone” story with the whole jazz band and Orff Ensemble behind them. The Humpty Dumpty group acting out three nursery rhymes and then launching into dynamic body percussion. The Cookie Jar kids running onto stage excited about cookies, visibly upset when they discovered the cookie jar was empty, hilariously running around the stage looking for them in the bell of the French Horn or inside a xylophone or under a piano while the two bands played a swingin’ blues. And then the final group invoking the 1930’s Savoy Ballroom as they Lindy Hopped so joyfully to a swingin’ Jumpin’ at the Woodside.  A parent later wrote to the 5th grade music teachers:

 

“This afternoon was bloody brilliant! Those grade 5 students had the biggest smiles on their faces. The energy was amazing!”

 

So it seems my loyalty to Peter Pan has paid off. As an adult teacher I’m hopefully helping kids grow into a responsible maturity that will both serve their own growth and a world in sore need of actual adults (see the news). But perhaps the greatest gift is to give them permission to be wholly their playful selves—at each step of the way. And in my adult workshops, to give adults permission to unlock the closet and reclaim their own playful self. All with a sense of artistry that is playfully serious and serious fun.

 

So on a Saturday morning on the other side of Taipei with a new group of some 40 Taiwanese Orff teachers, off I go again to speak those two words so seldom heard in adult life: “Let’s play!”