Having a New Point in Each Story: Potential Insertions of Theater in Childhood Education

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the possibilities of using storytelling as a way to insert theater in early childhood education. For that, I developed a Scenic-Narrative Experience based on the William Shakespeare’s plays The Tempest, which had as its main objective the use of space and materialities to involve children in the story. Early childhood education, the first school stage for children, is a time of great change and development for them. All learning and cognitive, motor, physical, social and emotional development go through playful experiences and play. Two qualities that we find in theatrical work. In this way, the focus of the research developed was to place the telling, narrating and playing as elements belonging to the theater. In Brazil, early childhood education addresses children from zero to 5 years old; however, this study is specifically for children from three to 5 years old, addressing three guiding axes: storytelling, theater with children and scenic space. Having children as protagonists and research participants. Documentary analysis, fieldwork and literature review were present in the applied methodology.

1. Introduction

Which story touches me? Princes and Princesses? Warriors? Dragons? Which stories made me more certain of who I am? I believe that listening to variegated stories is a way of building a door for the imaginary. This imaginary is full of places, features and characters that will take people to incredible adventures. My aim in this research is to make the art of storytelling closer to the art of theater. Are theater and storytelling—different arts? Is storytelling still worth nowadays? Is it possible to unite the rich simplicity of storytelling with the theatrical esthetics? Is the essence of storytelling different from the theater? A storyteller, a story and someone to hear are necessary for storytelling. What about the theater? Isn’t it true that also a text, an actor and an expectator are necessary for the theater? The difference between a storytelling and a theater is basically in the storyteller and the actor figure. The first will tell us a story. The latter will make it happen.

Then, how would it be possible to work with storytelling with children in a way they could be narrators, listeners and interlocutors in a story? How can I work the triangulation among my lens as an artist and teacher, authors who write about children, and children? Which stories “should” or “can” be shown to children of three to 5 years of age? Which strategies may I use to tell a story in which the theme and characters are dense and apparently out of the childhood universe? From the piece The Tempest, how revenge and forgiveness might reach children? What is the best way to make all this work moving from a class to a scenic space?

Looking forward to answer these and other further questions, I found out something quite clear: we are the outcomes of diverse histories and stories. Some of them are ours and some we borrowed from someone else, although each has a life of its own. It is not a coincidence that we cannot fix a date for when storytelling started to be a tradition nor if it is going to end 1 day: “The art of storytelling mixes itself with the history of humankind. The human being always had a need (and will always need) to listen and tell stories: for a better understanding of the self and with the world around in [1]”. Of course, through time the way to tell a story changed: storytelling has another social function and its activities are promoted through other methods and shapes.

The art of storytelling was been transformed according to the changes in the world and humankind, but has always been kept alive. Stories and storytellers reappeared between the 1970s and 1980s in the European, US and Canadian scenarios and between the 1980s and the 1990s in Brazil and Latin America in general. However, storytellers are quite different from stories and traditional “narrators”.

In general, at least in Western societies, storytellers accessed stories from oral tradition from the written rather than the listening tradition. Of course, most people have heard stories during their childhood, usually by parents, grandparents, teachers, and the like. However, contemporary storytellers had access to a huge range of narratives through books.

Living in the Era of “post” (modernity and so on) listening as a practice is often rare, although it is a human need: everybody has the need to “tell” the other about our lives. Our orality is “an artisan way of communication in [2]”. There is not a clear line in which one tells a story or the story tells someone’s life. In any case, we are all storytellers.

Nowadays, busy parents and technology (frequently substitutes for nannies or an entertainment to keep children well behaved) provide very rare opportunities for children to have new experiences. Even in kindergartens and schools, in general all children have similar experiences—some of them low-quality experiences—offered by professors frequently rigid in parameters or curricula. Educators get stuck into such norms that were supposed to be seen and used as references and guides.

It is worth to provide adventures for children through storytelling, theater and learning. Luciana Hartmann argues it is worth to provide narratives in theater classes, due to the fact that “we react to multi-sensorial stimulations provided by performance. Through that, we attribute meaning in [3]”. Carefree learning is funnier and organic, thus more productive.

By letting footprints, fragments of history and their pieces, one can open up possibilities for children to fill spaces with own histories and references, thus appropriating history in a unique and particular manner. In other words, what is the problem of substituting the literality in a route by the sinuosity of creativity? Why to not work with uncertainty and the unpredictable? One thing I have for sure: the imagination cannot create from nowhere, from emptiness. For creating anything, we need structure and construction, failures and successes, meetings and mismatches. Of course, there are previous knowledge, previous discoveries, combinations of ideas and generation of new ones. For creation, we need work, ideas, heart and sweating during all the processes. Like Benjamin [2] states, “storytelling marks as a mark left in the bowl of clay by the potter’s hand: the art of storytelling is a craftsmanship forged with the essence of who does it”.

2. Here comes the witch: the storytelling

One of the most world famous stories is Sherazade’s (Sahrazad). She survived because she used to grab attention from the stories she used to tell, as she understood that her “audience” was instigated by what would happen next. Sherazade is a character of the classic piece from the world literature One Thousand and One Nights that puts together stories and folk tales from diverse parts of India, Persia and the Arabic World written from the beginning of the ninth century onward. It also became the most famous piece of the Arabic literature.

The basic narrative is that the King of Persia was betrayed by its first spouse and after that could not trust anyone anymore. Therefore, after spending some time with a woman in a night, the king used to kill them the next morning to prevent the betrayal. The King did so for a long time, thus killing lots of young women in the kingdom. One time, he met Sherazade and she offered him a marriage, as she had a plan to keep herself alive and save the other women from the kingdom. Sherazade agreed with her sister that she would ask Sherazade a last story before her death: a last wish. The King gave Sherazade’s sister the wish and Sherazade started a story that fascinated and intrigued the King so he did not kill Sherazade. Therefore, the King would have the chance to know better about heroes, mysteries, adventures and fantasies. This strategy worked for 1001 nights.

Therefore, for 1001 nights the King awaited excitedly for another story from Sherazade. She told him variegated themes passionately, thus enchanting and instigating King’s curiosity every day. At the end, the King realized he could trust on his spouse and could not live without stories anymore, giving up on the idea of killing and making Sherazade a definitive Queen.

The King had the opportunity to review his past and understood his new place. Therefore, his life did not have the need to repeat mistakes and costumes from the past and could be an independent reality. At the same time, while Sherazade was telling him stories, she built her own story, had children with the King and grew them up, which is, she was alive and active! She made from her language and narration tools against death and became the author of her own life and history.

This millenary story demonstrates well the power that a good story has to touch our instincts, convictions, worries, dreams, etc. It exemplifies the power of a history to take us from a reality and from ourselves.

Few things have the power to be old and contemporary at the same time as storytelling. The art of telling a story was perpassed from generation to generation through oral and then written traditions¹. Histories/stories involving the secular and the sacred, perpassing gods, mystic traditions and bible stories², until more daily ones have been a way to teach costumes, religion, social behaviors, tradition and popular knowledge for a long time.

In general, storytellers had a privileged position in their societies, as they keep alive the cultural heritage of a specific group: “The storytellers were leading figures in the community because they were those who knew how to tell, based in facts, stories and myths, keeping alive the cultural heritage through the memory of the group. The storytellers drew stories from own experiences and from the knowledge obtained thereform. Therefore, narrating depended on the harvesting of knowledge from experience and their transformation into objects (visual, auditive, etc.) to be shown to others in [4]”.

A way our ancestors chose to educate and alert their people was through stories, and their related experiences. “It is worth registering that the storyteller of tradition, such as griôs, had a social role that sometimes was more private and sometimes more sacred, thus this figure is blurred as the “proclaimer” of truth and thereby with strength to pronouce moralities, costumes, principles, memories and ideologies, even in communities that were not preliterate in [5]”.

Navigators were also great story disseminators, as they were used to spending months in ships, going back and forth and doing commerce. The crew, to spend time and make the trip more fruitful, had the habit of storytelling. As people were not used to traveling, navigators used to bring with them news and narratives of other people, also using them to sell products and listening to histories of people in the lands. This way, navigators and peasants fed themselves with stories, knowledge, etc.

According to Benjamin [2], peasants and merchant sailors were the primary masters in narrating stories. Benjamin argues that both peasants and merchant sailors were responsible for the preservation of stories, as they were used to exchanging histories. While locals used to share local histories, navigators used to bring histories from faraway places.

In Brazil, in some archeological sites one may find some cave paintings of pre-historic groups that used to live in a region. Some indications that these people used to meet around a fire to talk or tell stories are in vestiges of bonfire, ceramics and other artifacts. “The art of narrating histories stem from ancient peoples that used to tell and perform stories to disseminate rituals, myths, knowledge about the sobrenatural world (or not) and acquired experiences through time in [6]”.

In the African continent, the act of telling a history keeps alive and is a ritualistic character. This is something nearer to a sacred moment that is usually shared among members or a village or town. “In Africa, all is “History”. The huge history of life includes the history of lands and water (geography), the history of plants (botany and pharmacopeia), the history of “sons from the Earth” (mineralogy and metals), the history of starts (astronomy, astrology) and so son in [7]”.

Storytelling is an expression of daily manifestations in many communities, a routine: it is the moment to put everybody together around a bonfire or under a tree. Storytelling is also part of the home environment, as it is a tradition that perpasses the elderly and children. However, storytellers in the continent are inferior to a special figure with superior status in the African tradition: the Griô.

The Griô figure is nearer to a mystique in the African continent and has special and specific social functions. Overall, the Griô might be compared to the Spanish medieval troubadour. Griô is not a “position” chosen as a lifestyle or a profession. One is born as a griô and thus is part of a family of griôs. Griôs are not a choice but a destiny that one learns since the early age. As griô is not a profession, griôs do not get paid for their activities. Griôs work for their people. A griô has a cultural and comunitary memory and all requirements for the art of orality.

Besides a storyteller, a griô is a musician, poet, organizer, conciliator or emissary who intermediates the communication among ethnic African groups. Griô is an artisan of words, someone who conducts the ritual of listening, seeing, imagining and participating in the memory of a place. He is a person with social and historic function who saves and has been maintaining the African oral tradition at least for the past 700 years.

After about 400 years of human trafficking and slavery in Brazil (1530–1888), our primary cultural formation comes from African histories that once started in Brazil to be mixed to other narratives from different people who lived here. Although storytelling has a strong tradition in Africa and other parts of the world, through time this tradition developed from the family environment or bonfires to other places in societies³. Storytelling became a contemporary art: manners, techniques and tools changed and keep changing over time. A fundamental issue did not change: people like to listen to good stories, as we are influenced by them. Stories are part of our biological and social constitution: we are pieces of stories in a permanent making. Storytelling is still alive in Western societies tempted by technology and other mindsets.

A modern way of telling a story/history is the posting on social media, whether one is telling something new about the weekend, a graduation ceremony, time spent at the beach, the need of a friend and so on. If in past moments, our ancestors used to draw cave paintings, currently millions of people are accessing personal accounts on social media to do the same. Therefore, the jargon “Once upon a time…” has a huge range of metaphors and sounds like a metaphor itself. When people listen to this sentence, they are invited to have a body posture of listening. By “listening”, people open their minds to imagination and emotions. A grandmother telling a story to a granddaughter is actually moving beyond any subject—love, life and death and so on. She is actually creating a space-time and getting into contact with her granddaughter in another level of interaction through a story and its metaphors. There’s a pact between who tells and who listens to a story.

Stories also have the power of an experience. According to Merleau-Ponty, children live in-between reality and imagination and this experience might be enlarged depending on the situation. Reasoning is not logical in a child, thus his/her way to see the world is different than an adult world: there’s another logic children inhabit that makes them think, feel and behave differently. Children understand the world from their own body and metaphors, such as adults—maybe more viscerally. Children create newer and richer metaphors that will be activated in their entire lives both in the real or imaginary world when they listen to once upon a time. Those who learn a story will know how to communicate to them.

Metaphors are part of stories. As in a symbolic structure, listeners of a story will trace their own journeys while listening to a story. Listening thus opens up a dialog with a literary work and a journey through its significances genuinely.

3. Look… are they dwarfs? Little ants? Fairies? No. they are children: storytelling, theater and childhood education notions, aspects and concepts

The relation between art and education is an issue that has been discussed for a long time: it seems it is necessary to advocate for obvious themes. Most important art-educators know that art and education is a successful marriage and a central combination for a critical, emancipating and creative educational formation of human beings.

As Desgranges puts it, it is necessary “to understand art as education while pure art, not necessarily educational art in [8]”. Put in another way, the focus should be on the experience that art provides, instead of pushing children to rationalize and express verbally the result of an experience. Shall we give a rational meaning for all actions? According to Benjamin, when a person gives a meaning for a social fact, one can call that experience. Should this meaning be necessarily rational?

From this reasoning, there are two questions. First: how stories or the storytelling may get closer to children in the educational context? Second: how does the “royal wedding” between theater and childhood education take into consideration playfulness and the recreational needs of small children?

Storytelling has the power of instigating joy, observation, imagination, ludic issues, vocabulary, oral language and writing skills. Furthermore, it is a bridge between reality and fantasy: the two worlds that children inhabit. Storytelling as a front door to the theater or as a perpassing feature for doing art: it is the same of thinking theater as a potential contribution to the Childhood Education.

How is the relation between art and education perceived and experienced in the everyday life of a school? I would say that childhood education with art itself is surrounded and perpassed by arrangements that people would call mess, disorder and chaos and all of them might be true. However, what’s the problem with mess, disorder and chaos? The order is a result of disorder: would it even be possible to create without experimentation, noise and movement? “Mess” might be a basic condition for exploring, creating and transforming one thing into another, a space in another to (re)construct new learnings and knowledge.

Curiosity is a fuel for learning. By playing and getting captivated (by art), small children discover the world and themselves slowly and in their time through building learning processes. At the Childhood Education, children understand the world through senses and imagination. They explore the world through vision, hearing and touch—not in a table writing words that make any sense.

Children learn to have fun: the essence of learning is ludic. Playing for children is a language and way of communication with the world and people around. It is also a venue for the expression of dreams, fears, creativity and acquisition of autonomy. Playing with games—the goal shall not be the competition, win or lose—small children get stimulated for team work and build up their social, moral, emotional, cognitive and psychomotor traits.

Games and learning have a direct and clear although not direct correlation. Put in another way, children do not play with the aim of learning a specific content or skill: children play for joy. Overall, when a game has a specific direction, joy is out of the game and playing has another function or essence. Learning is a direct consequence of playing, but that must not be its first aim.

Learning in games is spontaneous, natural and inherent to playing. Children learn playing and there is no need to rationalize the processes. Storytelling has a similar process: by listening or telling a history (orality), children are having fun and learning. Thus, the ludic provides learning and has no intention of describing a formal process with duties, evaluations or the generation of a “product” at the end.

It is correct to say that a specific game will develop physical, motor or social skills: by running, children develop spatial and motor skills; by listening or telling a story, children develop orality, vocal repertory, focus and social interaction; by playing hide-and-seek and/or jumping rope, children learn to count and have autonomy, etc.

Variegated examples of the interrelation between playing and learning processes could be mentioned, but the point is: by jumping rope with friends and counting one to 10 to have fun, learning is an organic process mixed with playing. The knowledge of counting one to 10 is built naturally, thus it is not an imposition. In the opposite direction, when children have to jump a rope with the specific aim of learning how to count from one to 10, the fear of making a mistake will be a substitute for joy and fun. Tests and judgments might inhibit the learning process.

In this sense, variegated games and the potential of each for children’s growth and learning could be mentioned, such as motor coordination, autonomy, vocal and body expression, body perception, balance, ability, imagination, creativity, logic thinking, etc., although the relevance of playing in the early childhood is not the focus of this work. However, it is worthy of mention that if children do not play, they will face challenges to read and interact.

Both through the storytelling and the theater, the learning process might be developed as the outcome of a ludic narrative. Thus, learning might be an outcome of a story or an attitude of the narrator. The encounter, sharing, complicity and exchange between the storyteller and the one who listens is the most important and more relevant factor: this provides the experience of a story or, better saying, a play. The experience of playing through a story is the opposite of a productivity thinking or the idea that everything has to have a utility.

From a child’s curiosity and willingness, the tendency to explore games come into play. By playing, children understand and build their own perspective, identity and perception of the world. Adults and children live in the same world: the way each one of them understands and behaves in the world differentiates them. By playing, children learn to interact with the outside world and vice versa, thus they assimilate external knowledge and information to their internal experience.

Theater and education have the potential of uniting and complementing theory and practice at the time of learning, whereas children are heard and respected in their wishes and necessities. Theater in education might be understood as a venue for social, cultural and esthetic education.

Childhood Education has an important social task in children’s formation, as its main objective is the education of a human being, as well as his/her relation with the world and other people. At the Childhood Education, issues, such as recognition, self-respect and respect for the other, are approached. All these issues are approached by playing and through body recognition: “By discovering manners by which we can develop body expressions, we discover new ways to move, new expressions and resources that we might use in relation with other bodies in social relations in [9]”.

The relation between adults and children is central to the Childhood Education. Most modern educational approaches raise the relevance of professors as partners of children: not the professors who “have” knowledge, but the professors who build knowledge with small children. In this line of reasoning, Lev Semenovic Vygotsky (1896–1934) is central, as the researcher developed the sociohistorical-cultural approaches that later became the cultural-historical psychology. According to this author, the social, historical and cultural situations are central to the development of human beings.

Vygotsky argues that human beings are in a constant process of lifelong humanization. In other words, children are not born ready but get dated influence for their intellectual development—historical, cultural, social and spatial. Therefore, professors are mediators to support children to interact with the world and themselves.

According to Vygotsky, the aim of (formal or informal) education is to support children in acquiring tools of their own culture. By teaching children know how to use those tools and a door is open for them to control their own behaviors, thus gaining autonomy and reaching the development of superior mental functions. Therefore, for this author the process of teaching and learning must respect the fact that children acquire tools in social interactions with adults and other children under different circumstances of formal and informal learning. In other words, for Vygotsky the main goal of education is not “to provide” children abilities and knowledge, but measures to support them in acquiring superior mental functions and own reasoning.

Vygotsky [10] then develops a theory of superior mental functions that human beings have. Elemental mental functions—such as reflections, motor development and perception—are native to human beings and animals. Those functions depend on the maturation to develop and include feelings, spontaneous attention, sensorimotor intelligence and associative memory.

Superior mental functions are restricted to human beings and are cognitive processes acquired through teaching and learning. At the superior mental functions-mediated perception, deliberate memory and logical thinking are promoted. Mediated perception is the capacity of concentration to a stimulus, for instance, distinguish and categorize a color or find a word in a page full of printed words. Deliberate memory is the tactics of memory to remember something. Logical thinking is related to our capacity of solving problems mentally through logic and other strategies.

All superior mental functions are acquired culturally, which are developed according to influences in the environment, common and specific cultural practices, and mental tools a culture develops to carry out such practices. According to Vygotsky [10], these functions become deliberate, mediated and internalized behaviors.

Deliberate superior mental functions are controlled by the person, not the environment, thus it is based on each person’s choice. Behavior guided by superior mental functions might focus or be guided by specific aspects from the environment, such as ideas, perceptions and images and ignore others. Deliberate superior mental functions are not dependent on the environment immediately or directly but mediated by cultural tools.

To understand Vygotsky’s theory, one has to have in mind four relevant concepts: interaction, mediation, internalization and zone of proximal development. Interaction is related to the fact that knowledge is a product of interpersonal relations, exchanges and interactions of a person with his or her environment: interaction is thus the result of a relation with the other and might be exchanged with a collective. The way children think, remember and observe is tailored by previous interactions with professors, parents and friends. In other words, what a child knows is worth, as well as how a child thinks and remembers the knowledge.

Mediation is the fact that knowledge is mediated by someone or some element, for instance, a professor, a book and education activity. Through mediation, superior mental functions are socially constituted and culturally transferred. Here comes into the scene the professor as mediator: the professor has cultural tools and is responsible for the stimulation to make the student interested by them. By knowing Vygotsky’s approach, professors can understand that their role in the teaching and learning process is more related to the development of superior mental functions than in a product.

Internalization is related to the process of internalizing culture, cultural tools and accumulated human knowledge. Human beings build and internalize knowledge through language, as it transmits superior mental functions: language and thinking are connected, thus when language and thinking are connected an external behavior gets mature into one’s mind. Human beings build and internalize knowledge through language that will transmit superior mental functions: as language and thinking are connected, external behaviors “grow in mind” and keep same structures, focus and functions as their external predecessors. The so-called General Genetic Law of Cultural Development is the moment when all functions are constant in a child: “first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (inter-psychological), and then inside the child (intra-psychological) in [11]”.

The fourth and most important concept is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): it is the reflection of the complex relation between learning and development and is related to the potential of becoming someone through the access of a “social other”. This process might be facilitated by a professor, an adult or a friend. ZPD is the distance between the actual levels of development of an individual to solve problems alone (zone of real development) and the levels of development of an individual to solve problems with orientation or collaboration with more capable partners (zone of potential development) (Vygotsky, 1978). In other words, this is the distance between what a child knows by her/himself and what might be achieved with the support of another person. In-between zones, the learning happens, as this is a process being built.

The Zone of Proximal Development is a particularly important concept in theater teaching, when one thinks on the relation among children and the theater professor: such a partnership is a potential cognitive and social development of small children. Vygotsky says that a game is a source for ZPD: “Play is a source of development and creates the zone of proximal development in [11]”.

Vygotsky chose the word “zone” because in his reasoning children’s development is not linear but a continuum of abilities and skills in different levels. The word “proximity” refers to a limited zone of abilities and skills that will develop in the near future.

In sum, Vygotsky’s historic-cultural theory or approach embraces complex actions combining two processes: natural and cultural development. On the one hand, natural development is biological; on the other hand, cultural development is an outcome of human beings interacting with artifacts and people so learning promotes development. In other words, children have to grow up to learn but some cognitive, social or language developments depend on what children have learned. Therefore, intelligence is a behavior that might be learned and taught.

According to Vygotsky, it is worth for children’s development to talk with other children and adults about problems and concepts to understand them. The author used to say: imagination is worth and indivisible from real thinking in small children, thus they are also of worth in childhood development.

Vygotsky also highlighted the relevance of games for children’s development, especially the dramatic or make-believe game. Children’s performance in a game is better than in a normal situation of learning. Games are the “magnifying lens” for childhood development and children will perform above their overall potential: “In play the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behavior; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level in [11]”.

Some researchers of Vygotsky tested theories. One of them, Zinaida Istomina (qtd. Roopnarine, 2013), compared words children between four and 5 years of age could remember in a dramatic game or in a situation of regular learning: a shopping list was given to a group of children to buy things in a bakery, thus a scenario was stated for them to play with other children and a normal list was provided to another group of children to memorize words. As the outcome, children who participated in the game memorized more words: “In a 4-year-old’s play, we can observe higher levels of such abilities as attention, symbolizing, and problem solving than in the others situations in [12]”.

From the social experiments from Vygotsky’s theory, researchers demonstrated that make-believe develops abilities in children, as the capacity of self-regulation of physical, social and cognitive behavior, which is the capacity of children to follow external or internal rules, instead of impulsive behavior. In the make-believe, as in any other kind of game, rules must be followed and this provides to children space to the practice of self-control: playhouse, for instance, has rules such as the mom and the dad who behave differently from children; at the superhero, a hero and a villain are expected.

The make-believe and/or play freely also promotes the cognitive development of small children. At the time children play with objects transforming them—such as a block into a truck or the pencil into a magic wand—they develop the basis for the abstract thinking, splitting the object from its meaning. The game will be more fruitful if objects are not realistic, as in the above-mentioned examples.

Researches on children’s development, as well as researches on children are part of the history of humankind and are still a concept to be revisited. According to Clarice Cohen [13], children’s interaction in the world is related to the understanding of childhood. Although children always existed, the idea and/or concept of childhood is a modern issue. Childhood is a historical process built according to cultural and social characteristics of a time. Currently, children are recognized as people with rights, including the right to become a citizen. These rights are granted by world organizations, such as The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)⁴, as well as other organizations and laws around the world.

The school has a main role in regard to the social construction of childhood. With the raise of childhood or as its consequence, there are other specializations, such as pediatrics, development psychology and pedagogy [14]. Childhood as social category is constantly changing and has quite peculiar characteristics. According to Sarmento, the concept of childhood strengthened with children into economic spheres and has two directions: first, in peripheral countries with child labor and, second, in marketing issues as children are both promoters of products (publicity) and consumers. Currently, there’s a market of specific products for children and it is growing.

There’s a wild variety of cultural products for children in the market, such as cinema, cartoons, amusement parks, games, television and others. These cultural products generate other products, such as fashion, food, tools, educational material, recreational services, etc.: the list is long. Market for children is one of the biggest markets in the world and includes franchising all around the world. Due to globalization, children around the world—Japan, Brazil, the USA, Germany, etc. —access same products and share same preferences, although such accesses are unequal and exclusionary. For example, watch cartoon from Japanese studios; collect Pokémon cards; play videogames; read and watch Harry Potter; eat MacDonald’s; watch Disney, etc.

However, it is worth to highlight that even if children have the same supply of products, they access them differently, both due to cultural and social context issues. Put in other words, at the same time children may access a “global culture”, they live in “local cultures and realities”. Another important issue is that all products children access were once developed by an adult that might stereotype children.

The end of childhood is often discussed as a consequence of a supposed loss of children’s innocence and purity, based on the fact that children are often exposed to all places of social life, such as sexualization and violence. In this sense, two kinds of childhood are placed on the table: the real and the ideal childhoods. Therefore, children are in the center of postmodern debates. Children are often subject to labeling, classification, explanation and attempts to tell how their minds work, or how children think and settle relations with the world. Although these efforts aim to support children, they often aim to regulate and dictate how children should behave. Sarmento [14] divides cultures in the childhood into four structuring axes: interactivity, playfulness, fantasia from reality and reiteration. Therefore, according to Sarmento, children live in the world according to their interactions: through the culture of play, make-believe and zest for repetition. In sum, the concept of childhood or, as Sarmento puts it; Cultures of Childhood are reinvented, institutionalized and reinstitutionalized according to their historical moment. According to Sarmento, from the moment we recognize children as social actors, which is, as capable of action and interpretation. Therefore, societies must give children the right to participate in the processes of normalization of social lives.

Childhood was once invisible, ignored, romanticized, sanctified, demonized, cultured, etc., but currently children are considered as a social group with individuals capable of interacting with the world and are constantly reconfigured in the middle of urban, domestic and digital violence. Children are not seen as passive agents, empty of opinions or obliged to follow what adults impose.

4. Mirror, mirror on the wall… but is this theater or storytelling?

Which aspects of theater and performativity permeate storytelling? What is the line between literature and theater in the act of storytelling? What differentiates storytelling from history at the theater?

There are many debates about storytelling as an art by itself, or part of theater, or literature. My focus in this research is not to advocate for any topic. However, positioning my perspective in the research, storytelling is a performatic art (in the sense it is an artistic moment in which the storyteller is part of a piece and also a person is part of that piece). Thus, it belongs to the Scenic Arts—it is not theater, but shares with it common points.

The first argument of defenders for a differentiation and/or categorization between theater and storytelling focuses on the figure of the actor versus the narrator. While the actor “incorporates” a character, the narrator tells us about a character. This way, the narrator would present a character while an actor would be the character.

Another issue is the fourth wall in theater⁵ but not in storytelling: in the latter, the communication between the narrator and the public must be direct. The issue of scenario is also raised: while in the theater it is necessary, in storytelling it is not and might happen in any place. Another issue is the fact that theater represents a story while storytelling tells a story. However, some storytellers are actors and some actors are storytellers. They question the line that splits these two divides that makes less and less sense.

Overall, these are the main arguments to distinguish storytelling from theater. However, theater and arts are being transformed and questioned about their forms and definitions. The frontiers among different artistic expressions—dance, theater, music, performance, visual art, cinema, etc. —are redesigned and redefined all the time and the line between one and the other is often undefined. Still, storytellers from literature expressions have another differentiation between the storyteller and the narrator. Storytellers would be actors/actresses aiming to interpret but not message, while narrators aim to share experiences and the making of a text or story. In the postmodernity lines between arts are “blurry”, as a mixture and appropriation from one artistic form by the author give the tone of the era. The main tone then is the aim to do art that ends up mostly in experimentation that may potentially conduct the artist or artistic piece to various ways.

Furthermore, is it worth the question of which theater it’s approached? Greek theater? Postmodern? Musical? Popular? Classic? What are the contemporary definitions of actor and theater? These issues, with no universal and definitive answers, are constantly changing and being scrutinized by researchers. I will point out worthy differences between the actor and the storyteller, instead of answering the questions.

Storyteller gives their body, soul, imagination, voice and sound to give life for a story that he might not have written originally, but will certainly retell, recreate and redefine each performance: they are performers of other authorships. Both the actor and the storyteller have a working tool to communicate with the audience: the body (physical body and voice). Both the actor and the storyteller give life to old or new texts through the body relation with the audience. However, the narrator blends real and fictional elements for situations from the past, while the actor works in live situations. “Oral narration of stories is an art fully developed only at the moment of a performance. As dancing, theater and singing, oral narration leaves incomplete tracks in the physical supports that try to save it. Oral narration’s unpredictability is the measure of its vitality, as it is fully reached in the encounter with the recipient in [15]”.

Hence, what is the actual difference between theater and storytelling? For me, theater puts the text in movement, while the storytelling puts the movement in the text: this is a worthy nuance. Maybe the main difference between theater and storytelling is the figure actor/actress x narrator: while the former represents, the latter presents. At storytelling, the narrator is a performer who presents himself or herself to the public and at the same time accepts intervention from the public. Elements, such as rhythm, intention and images, are worth in theater and other artistic languages, although differentiated.

Narrator or narration figures are worth since the Greek theater and perpasses all times. They might be noted in the narrator figure in prologs of Greek pieces (including the choir) and the Renaissance to narrate moments that are not revealed directly in the scenes. In other words, instead of representing (doing) something, they would present (tell) that. Still, it might be the case that a courier in the middle of a piece just narrates a fact that will change or settle the next events, as medieval minstrels; the narrator at the epic theater from Brecht; actors in popular theater, etc., the fact is that narration and/or the narrator figure is always alive in the theater.

5. Dragons? Knight? Goblins? No! A tempest

Believe that people enjoy listening to and telling stories, almost as an inherent act of human beings. Tales of La Fontaine, causos of Ariano Suassuna, stories of the Grimm Brothers, cordéis, Disney fairy tales, Marvel and DC Comics adventures and heroes, tales of Marquees de Sade, urban legends, the Greek, Roman and Egyptian myths… The truth is, the major part of knowledge we have is being transmitted from generation to generation through storytelling, both oral and written. Historical facts, real or fictitious stories: stories are alive in every culture around the world.

The storytelling itself provides children the discovery of the world through the presentation and resolution of conflicts. Therefore, working with the plot of The Tempest could be a way of provoking children to reflect so they could sharpen and stimulate critical sense. Playing raises questions about cause and consequence, action and reaction, showing that our choices pave our ways. Playing might be good, bad, dangerous, helpful and susceptible of praise and/or reprehension and is always a result of our decisions and actions. The main character pursued—through knowledge—humanist values and believed in the capacity of realization of men. Another interesting component is relative to the dispute and use of power that runs through the whole play, reaching directly or indirectly every character in this story. The Tempest could serve as a way of taking distance from children stereotypes, so it is a method to work with human elements that are presented in all ages. Nevertheless, this has to be made with aesthetical and ethical care while we are dealing with children, that is to say: at the same time, the play brings elements of a fairy tale, it also works with the reality of human relations.

Another reason that led me to choose this play was the place where everything happens and the message it leaves to us. Every action of The Tempest happens in an island, just like a world apart where everything is permitted, almost through some kind of enchantment, letting everyone to manifest his or her real feelings. The island allows the meeting with the other, and the creation of a net of relations between the characters, a web of affectionate, philosophical, social and political relations. Since the objective is the Scenic-Narrative Experience in the Centers of Childhood Education, thinking about a specific scenario was the only way to ease both the production and the comprehension of children about the proposal parts.

Many people, including educators, could question the author and the play we choose. However, I think that when we show to the kids just happy-ending or “childish” stories, we end up underestimating the imagination and the small children’s capacity to understand. From an early age, it is important that they have contact with stories that are capable of sharpening their curiosity: stories that raise dilemmas and reflections. Bringing closer the fantasy of reality—where the children will live in a determined real situation, but hypothetically—is a way that children have to build a sense of right and wrong, cause and consequence. Furthermore, this is a way for children to live emotions, like anxiety, anger and vengeance, in a positive way. Thereby, they can glimpse at tangible possibilities of resolving their own inside dilemmas and external conflicts through the plot.

With a chosen story, then we managed to understand it better: studying its lines and interlines of secondary speeches, the character’s nuances, and even what and how could the storytelling proceed. The idea was to be faithful to the story of The Tempest, but the question we discussed most was the issue of fidelity to the written play. How could one naturally tell a story from a script considered far-fetched and hard to understand? How could one put words into movement? The first step would be to understand a story and our personal interpretation of it. The piece approaches power, good and evil, illusion versus reality, vengeance, discovery and redemption.

Analyzing the play, we can divide it into three branches: power, comedy and romance. Yet, when we start to deepen this analysis, we discover that the whole plot spins around a fight for power, that is apparently present in one of the cores, but that permeates and connects the three of them.

In the romantic core, there are Ferdinand and Miranda, but also Prospero who desires the marriage of the young couple, so his daughter can become the princess of Napoli. Therefore, as soon as he gets back to Milan into his dukedom, he will have influence in Napoli through his daughter. Just like other Shakespeare’s plays, the conflict between families and/or parents ends up to be solved through their sons.

In the comic core, the sailors Trinculo and Stephano (who represent, in the play, the people in general), even drunk, are instigated by Caliban to kill Prospero and govern the island. When Caliban transits through this nucleus, he plots the death of Prospero, so that he does not have any kind of power upon the island or upon him anymore, in an opportunist kind of conspiracy. Also in the same nucleus, the sailors seduce Caliban—the island is native—with a “drink of the gods” for him to show the wealthy and the beauties of the place, just like it happened when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, offering mirrors and other tools to the Native American people.

In the nucleus of power, the relations are clearer: on one side, Prospero is willing to return being a duke. On the other side, his brother Antonio and the Napoli king’s brother (Sebastian) are willing to kill the king and take the power of Napoli. At the end of the play, Shakespeare prepares his grand finale gathering the three nucleuses in a common scene to the settlement of scores.

Regarding the message of the play, I think that it has a critical particular and timeless function. In a symbolic way, it speaks about encounters between different kinds of life, culture and social organization; different kinds of thinking, acting and different moral values, composing a plurality of worlds that Prospero tries to control.

5.1 Transforming The Tempest in a new story to be told

Every story has a beginning: a door through which we enter in the plot. Nevertheless, the beginning does not mean necessarily the beginning of the story, or determined chronological way of telling the facts that we should follow. A beginning means a starting point. It is like a house with many windows that you can come closer and choose any window to spy. As far as you choose a window, a new part of the house will reveal itself. The same thing happens to the story, because you can choose where to “spy” first and that is your beginning. After all, the stories also have many sides, various parts and “rooms”.

With the story chosen, it was time to think about how it was going to be told. The main objective was to work with theater and spatiality in storytelling, thus creating opportunities to link action and feeling through the children’s bodies, contrasting to an essentially verbal approach. In other words, the goal was not to transmit a specific knowledge, or any kind of formation to the little ones. On the contrary, the mixing of the process and the product, the spectator and the storyteller, reality and fantasy was the goal. The dramatic line to tell the story would keep not only a few characteristics of the original narrative, but also the embodiment of some characteristics of modern types of narrative. The actors/storytellers should not memorize the text, or parts of it; they should understand it, be hypnotized by it, so children hearing them could be “hypnotized” as well through a personal encounter with the story. We wanted the storytelling with freshness and a corporeal rhythm that would communicate to children a sense of freedom and confluence, so they could appreciate the moment and be willing to know what would come next.

An important point was the public would stay in the middle of the room. They would be in the center of the action, and all the rest (narration and scenes) would be surrounding them. This disposition of the space would also serve to instigate and call children at any moment to direct their eyes and bodies to a different space of the ambient. Thereby, we blurred the idea of the spectator as someone seated and inert watching passively at something that would happen in front of him or her.

As every action of the play happens in an island, the plot might be divided in the nucleus, so we thought about making children try the sensation of also being on the island, which would be divided in different parts as well. This division, as a way to identify the nucleus and characters, would provide a better understanding of the plot by children. To symbolize this “division” of the island, we chose to work with different colors to each core and to materialize these spaces and colors, we used carpets.

In this way, we agreed to work with five colors of carpets: blue, red, green, brown and orange. The blue carpet would be in the middle, where the children would also be seated (at least most of the time); the red carpet would be in the entrance, at right, representing the part of the island where Prospero and his daughter Miranda live. The green carpet, in its turn, would stay at the back in the right side, representing the part of the island where the nobles are residing; the brown carpet, in the left side at the back, representing the place of the island where Caliban lives, where he meets with Trinculo and Stefano. Finally, the orange carpet’s position would be in the right side at the front, representing the part of the island where Ferdinand was lost. We decided that Ariel (spirit of the air) would be the only one to move freely around every nucleus/part of the island.

From the beginning of the research, I was convicted that I wanted to tell a story in a different way, so children would not be mere spectators. The aim of making the story a reason to play with children should provide them sensorial and cognitive experiences, thus aspects as sounds, smells, visual stimuli, etc., were worth as the environment that would invite children to get involved with a story.

The idea of making the storytelling with Shakespeare and theatrical principles was also a way of allowing spaces for the experience that could solve the frontiers between formation, theatrical action and artistic reception. Therefore, it was necessary to think about a scenic environment that would enable children to enter in a fiction ambient with visual and sensorial sensations.

The child does not necessarily tell the story but does participate actively in the storytelling through games and jokes. Therefore, scenic and audio environments and the objects should be of particular relevance for children to activate or develop affective memory, thus creating records through storytelling and playing at the same time.

Having playing in mind, I started to search for a scenic environment that could open up the possibility for children to try the sensorial story and emotionally in their bodies, besides listening to it. Thus, they would have a space in a threshold between fiction and reality that could stimulate interactions among children and the environment, thus sharpening imagination and providing the possibility of increasing their perceptive horizons.

Dewey, as much as Vygotsky, described how important is a physical environment enriched with materials and objects. This ambient affects directly children’s behavior learning processes. Likewise, it was important to organize and select the materials and objects that we would have in our story, for instance choosing how it would be organized in the room.

At the same time, the environment needs to be a place of complicity and confidence for children to feel safe to play. This was one of the reasons that led me to choose that the storytelling should be in the same space that children would attend, like children’s educational centers. However, it was necessary to create a different atmosphere from the daily life to promote curiosity and imagination for the story.

There were many elements to think of. I was searching for a scenic environment connected to the fictional context of the story and capable of generating a material that would give support to the narrative, thus transmitting safety to children release themselves and get involved with visual, sonorous and tactile stimuli. I believe that when we embrace plastically, audiovisual, musical and linguistic aspects, the work can mobilize sensorial, motor, symbolic, affective and cognitive dimensions of children.

At first, I started to work with triggers and/or scenic devices that could help to build the narrative and unravel the story piece by piece—layers and not necessarily linearly. The aim of the work was that the children could have to perform their own experiments with these objects and the narrative because creativity can be learned and stimulated. Therefore, materials, time and encouragement are needed from people who conduct these activities. I believe that the teacher can build or promote the learning space of students: “when children have opportunities to be creative, their language, social and cognitive skill grow” [16].

However, the actors/narrators had difficulties in telling the story through the objects. Although I said they could insert elements in their stories that were not in Shakespeare’s pieces, they were really stuck to the written story. The thought that “if the actors cannot do it, how could children be able to?” started to emerge. After performing some further experiments, we decided that the story would not be told through the objects, but with them. We changed the focus to think about ornaments and scenic elements capable of characterizing the space where the story was going to happen. From then on, conditions were created to discover how we would tell the story of a tempest.

In the search for a scenic environment that was capable of becoming an immersive ambient for the children to feel stimulated to explore the space, we started to look for fictional elements with a potential to become concrete objects. The first idea that came to our minds was the “transportation” of children to the island where the whole action of playing happens. Thus, the storytelling should happen in a closed space: a classroom.

We wanted to have architecture as a reference to make associations between the space where the characters were stuck: in other words, an island and the classroom where students are “captivated” most of the day.

From this thought, we considered that it would be important to work with a materiality that could go beyond the five senses (tactile, hearing, sight, palate and sense of smell), in a way that the dramatical process of the story could be stimulated. The story would be found and woven gently by the storytellers and the children. It is important to say that all intentions and objectives should be rooted in the act of playing games and/or other plays. That reminded me of something very simple, but that delighted me when I was a child and is still a source of joy: the tunnel.

In many public spaces with reserved areas for children, there is a concrete tunnel for them to go through, as well as closed slides in a tunnel form. In indoor parks (shopping centers and children funhouses), there are toys with tunnels. In children’s programs, there are tests where children need to walk through a tunnel and so on. The examples are many, and I thought they were a good idea to start the storytelling, because to enter a tunnel seems to be a good way of stirring up the imagination with children.

After some experiences, our story would start with one of the actors/storytellers going to the children’s classroom and asking them to be part of an adventure. To begin with, children would have to take up a courage test: they have to pass through a tempest. Lanterns are then distributed to them and they enter with one of the actors/storytellers in a dark tunnel where they experience the storm. Outside, the other actors/storytellers make sounds that remit to a tempest at the sea (thunders, bolts, wind, storm, rough sea, etc.) while they say some phrases to start the play.

The invitation for children to enter the tunnel is a way of awakening the curiosity in them to get into the “unknown” and live an adventure. It is also an act of intentionality, in which every child can choose if they want to be in a tunnel or not. Participating in a storm inside a tunnel manufactured with black cloth is a simulation of a certain reality but with concrete elements that allow imagination and creativity to arise.

I preferred to put the actors/storytellers outside the tunnel, so that they could realize the sonorous ambiance apart from the “scene”. This was the beginning of the play, and the starting point of our storytelling was directly connected to the experience of fear and the capacity to overcome it. Fear was a question that worried us because we always thought that the scene inside the tunnel with the storm narration in the dark could frighten the children in a way that would make them want to come out of the tunnel, instead of being stimulated to face it. Thus, we decided that each child could choose if he or she would like to cross the tunnel or stay outside it. Those who chose to stay out of the tunnel would be invited to help us create the sound effects of the storm.

For this purpose, we provided X-ray sheets, rain sticks and letter-size paper sheets and asked them to blow and to make sounds with their mouths that reminded us of the sound of the wind. This way, they would get interested and curious—both children who decided to enter the tunnel or those who chose to stay out.

When the sea and the tempest calmed down, the children are invited to get their boats (paper ships—origami—hung along the tunnel, but not opened yet) and to get out of the tunnel. For those who chose to be outside the tunnel, one of the actors/storytellers would give them the boat. The way out of the tunnel leads them to the entrance door of the room. Once at the door, the children are suggested to leave their lanterns in a wooden box and to open their boats to be able to get to the island. With the boats in their hands and oriented by one of the actors/storytellers, everyone goes sailing through the room and “discover” the island until they sit in the middle (blue carpet).

In every island’s core (carpets), there would be a rack on the floor with accessories that would distinguish each character in the course of the storytelling. In the cores, there would also be a stair (to symbolize a tree) or wooden cubes. The actors/storytellers are wearing overalls of different colors, with specific clothes to make the narrator, and put on the accessories/objects every time they will play a character. Everyone passes through the attribution of being a narrator or a character during the show/storytelling.

With everyone—spectators and actors/storytellers—inside the room, the five actors/storytellers would start to present Shakespeare to children, speaking about the story in some kind of introduction before starting the storytelling itself.

During the whole show/storytelling, children are expected to participate actively, going through the experience of being inside the story through games and plays, as telling a story is a way of giving life to it.

I would like to highlight specific moments of the storytelling where the children are invited to play and to interact with the story:

* Scene 1 - Caliban and the sailors: they go out to kill Prospero, find the kids, think they are very sad, distribute small bottles with magical grape fruit and ask them to play circle games. They make two circles and play.

* Scene 2 – Marriage between Miranda and Ferdinand: soap bubbles are distributed to the public, so that they can make the magical party Prospero ordained Ariel to do.

* Scene 3 – Caliban does not want to fulfill his tasks: Ariel distributes feathers to the children to tickle him.

* Scene 4 – Caliban and the sailors go to Prospero’s cave to kill him: first, one of the actors/storytellers plays “statue” with the kids and then “teaches” them to imitate a dog. When Caliban and the sailors draw near, everyone turns into a statue. When they go to get the statues, they “transform” into dogs and chase the sailors and Caliban.

* Scene 5 – Antonio plans to kill the King of Napoli: some children are chosen to wear vests and receive the rack’s “hooks” to “watch” if no one is coming. Other children receive whistles and keep “monitoring” to wake up the king in the right time to avoid his death.

* Scene 6 – Ariel, under the orders of Prospero, tries to drive the nobles mad, giving them visions of a feast with music and spirits: fruits are distributed to the children.

These are some moments of interactions between public, story and actors/storytellers. In the course of all the storytelling, children are instigated to participate, relate with the objects, be part of the scenario and to use the outfits. They are invited to sing, dance, play, move from one island to another, to eat fruits and to drink magical juices, etc. In a natural way, children take control of the story, becoming characters and/or accomplices of the actors/storytellers, “performing” and making theater.

In all moments, elements and sonorities are made available to displace children between reality and fiction, so the spectators are involved and stimulated to build their own images of the story. These images are triggered from the space and its ambiance. Regardless of the idea of informing, we privileged the idea of forming. In other words, we should tell the story that Shakespeare wrote but want children to live the story or “understand” the story according to their own way of understanding things.

According to Desgranges [8], the spectator is not someone who assumes a passive posture in front of the artwork, but someone who is there to draw up his or her own particular interpretation of it. The “understanding” of determined artwork is not given as something immutable by its creators, and is being constantly built and rebuilt by its spectators through a creative, productive and authorial act.

Finally, actors/storytellers sit around children asking them to tell their favorite stories that could be true or invented. Each one of the five actors/storytellers keeps a group of children and stimulates this group to choose their favorite characters of stories they know, to tell stories they know and to choose drawing as to what symbolizes these characters. The actors/storytellers use a body painting pencil, make drawings on the kids and paint their hands, faces and shoulders, and vice versa.

6. Conclusion: another point… follow the yellow bricks road

We presented the Scenic-Narrative Experiences in the five Centers of Early Childhood Education in Brazil in 2018. In this conclusion, I’ll try to answer some questions: what kind of experience do children live with their presentations? What kinds of questions were raised through the experiences? Was the Scenic-Narrative Experience really a free space for children to play, or did the actors/storytellers direct it all? Was there any kind of theatrical learning?

Before I answer these questions, it is important to say that in 2016 and 2017, I developed workshops with teachers working in these early childhood education centers. In these workshops, I worked on storytelling using summaries of Shakespeare’s plays, so that later these teachers could experience in their workplaces what was experienced and produced during the workshops. It was also the objective of the workshop to collect data on how teachers understood and work with storytelling in their own daily routine and what possible bridges or connections we could make with theater. The idea was to awaken in the participants an interest in new possibilities and ways of telling a story, permeating literature, but mainly with a focus on the body, sensations and discoveries of new paths through storytelling. Then, we presented the scenic-narrative experiences.

As every presentation happened in the classroom space, this apparently common place turned out to be part of the narrative as it was transformed into an island. Children interchanged the roles of the spectator or performer during the Scenic-Narrative Experience, thus mixing up narrative and performance. Children played in a familiar space and gave a new meaning to it. In doing so, real and fictional roles were mixed, as each kid constructed a particular narrative of the story through theater and performance playing in a playfulness space.

During the Scenic-Narrative Experience, children lived and thought with autonomy in an environment they were heard of and respected: active human beings with autonomy in the process of teaching-learning. In the experience, I was willing to understand to which extent children based their experiences on their own will and were interlocutors and creators of the story they were living together.

The search for a rational understanding of the story was based on senses, relation between body and space, feelings and other issues that promoted imaginative activities. In other words, through imagination, creativity and emotions, children built meanings and feelings to the reality around them.

Imagination is an incentive to build a “reality” in other terms: the way some situation could develop with some magic and color, the invention of the impossible through different sensorial stimuli beyond exchange of information and the forming of relationships. Building a meaning to the story through the qualities’ imagination and embodiment in as an environment of cognitive stimulation is different from accepting a meaning assigned by others and is more substantial.

Thus, in the fieldwork we had some time for children to absorb the Scenic-Narrative Experience in their own way: no obligation of trying to rationalize through words or drawings. Each child had sensations they experimented and a painting (in a certain part of their body) of characters of their stories—and not necessarily of the story that was being told. Subjectivity, sensitivity and imagination, instead of objectivity and reason, were the subjects being researched. I searched for an experience that, according to Larrosa [17], would produce effect and leave some traces or impressions.

The Scenic-Narrative Experience was built to involve every participant with sensations, so that each could live an experience that went through all personal senses. Therefore, all participants were part of the story that was being narrated, performed and experienced. The objective of this experience might construct the learning process through lived experiences in a fictional context inside a space of creation and fun.

For the proposal to work, availability of children was needed: they were supposed to participate in the game, the scenic and sonorous environment, thus diving into the story, touches touch and let. In this way, they could sharpen their senses and perceptions, provoking the feeling—not the rational thinking. Constructing a space that made children feel safe at the same time that instigated them was crucial for children to play freely with the story, and to relate it realistically with the fictional context, thus getting immersed in the act of playing.

Because the space was at the same time the island of Prospero and the classroom of the participants, they felt safe when they saw their names in the lockers, their toys in the right place, their backpacks, etc. However, at the same time there was also a variety of new and unknown elements that provoked their curiosity; things they could touch, move, take, etc.

During presentations, we were not willing to guide children. Orientations were given, but children were free to move from an island to the other or even get out of the classroom. Because of that privilege given to children, it was necessary to speak with other teachers and auxiliaries that they were not supposed to interfere, but to ask children to keep seated down and remain silent. In order to make the idea of playing work, it was necessary to leave children free to enter or not in the game, to look or not to at a scene or narrative, and to accept or not to play with us.

Although the focus on listening was given, other types of focuses are also worth—vision, tactile perception, smells and tastes. Therefore, searching for a logic that could reach feelings rather than rationalization of verbal communication was also a goal. Thus, children’s understanding of stories was never an objective.

The physical proximity with the artists allowed the children to touch, grab, pull and watch actors/narrators, thus provoking complicity and fellowship among them. This intimacy generated confidence and in fact they felt invited to be part of what the story and gradually the lines between production and enjoyment were getting dissolved.

Another factor I considered important was the end of the story without formal issues, such as applause or chats. The story ended up with everybody seated and sharing own stories like in a game: “I just played; now it’s your turn!”

As Piaget (1928) skillfully states, children build their knowledge through the interaction with the world around and this is the reason why it is important to have the freedom to touch, see, explore and manipulate different objects, thus allowing children to participate in different games and plays, singing, dancing, jumping, moving, etc. Put in other words, children must have daily opportunities to express their creativity, and I believe the Scenic-Narrative Experience is such opportunity.

After listening to the story and having the opportunity to tell their own stories at the end, children had the chance to “woven narratively their experience,” and through this experience they were capable of understanding themselves as cultural subjects. Like Girardelo states: “Through listening stories […] and perceiving their own stories being listened, children woven narratively their experiences and by doing so they constitute themselves as cultural subjects. By getting into a narrative game teachers and children increase the common symbolic space full of images, corporal and cultural reverberation of their voices – the scope of the children’s education. Thus, they become human beings that are narrated and narrators with all the favorable implications of it to the personal, social and cultural life of each and of the group in 15]”.

During presentations, children were able to get involved emotionally with the story and communicate with each other. I believe they had their creativity sharpened and a greater interaction with the group. Through the game with their pairs and with narrators/storytellers, the capacity of a group working and solving problems was stimulated. This quality of interacting with the other and solving problems will help the child to develop posterior abilities like writing, mathematics and the capacity of solving misunderstandings with classmates.

One of the main characteristics of the contemporary theater—performativity or postdramatic—is the dilution of its borders with other kinds of art, like visual arts, performance, dance and music. In the storytelling, this happens as well, as Fabio Medeiros says: “It is not necessary too much effort to cross the art of storytelling with other artistically languages, because they are settled on the back and forth of arts, bit directly or indirectly. Painting, theater, pantomime, dance, music, opera, cinema, animation, architecture, sculpture, technological arts, games and television: they are the soul of human beings in [18]”.

The Scenic-Narrative Experience was similar, as besides games and playing different artistic languages were employed, such as music, visual arts, theater and dance.

When one thinks about formal or informal theater’s learning practices in educational spaces, the discussion about contemporary theater is necessary. Thus, we need to propose a construction of knowledge that might arise from the experience provoked by game and theatrical practice. This way, people do not become captive to rules and methodologies. On the contrary, each technique or methodology has to be considered as possibilities and should be reviewed with a look that converges with artistic practices of the theater professor.

Daily routines of classrooms—accomplishment of a high loading time schedule, fulfillment of plans and diaries, planning, meetings, following parameters, guidelines and curricular base—frequently give little room for creativity that goes beyond school parameters. Nevertheless, educators should keep in mind that the educational nature of art is born from experience (Dewey). Certain knowledge we learn by doing, so through the experience of acting.

For this reason, every scenic and audio conception of Scenic-Narrative Experience came from the idea that it could work as a trigger or dispositive that produces sensorial stimuli on the spectators. This can be made by the offering of materials that stimulate and explore children’s possibilities, instead of seeking which answers they would give to these experiences: no predefined objectives should be stated, thus opening up space for the uncertain and unexpected. Therefore, the actors/storytellers have to be prepared for improvising and the unannounced.

I believe in the pedagogical power of theater that lives in the aesthetical and collective capacity of awakening different ways of thinking and affecting children’s behavior through their exchange with pairs. In this sense, the Scenic-Narrative Experience is capable of generating a perceptive experience of narration of a story. When children live their adventure in an island, they participate collectively in a fiction with own body, sensorial and cognitive experiences. Each object or scenario has a symbolic value for the story but also evoked curiosity in children. To achieve these objectives, a creative scenario for interactions of children in theater through storytelling was provided.