RESEARCH ARTICLE
Reception of the children’s theater
Fehime Nihal Kuyumcu*
Istanbul University, Turkey
*Corresponding Author: F. Nihal Kuyumcu: nihal.kuyumcu@istanbul.edu.tr
Abstract
Citation:
Fehime Nihal Kuyumcu
(2017)
Reception of the children’s
theater Open Science Journal 2(3).
th
Received: 28 July 2017
th
Accepted: 8 August 2017
th
Published: 15 August 2017
Copyright:© 2016 This is an
open access article under the terms
of the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium,
provided the original author and
source are credited.
Funding: The author(s) received
no specific funding for this work.
Competing Interests: The
author have declared that no
competing interests exists.
Reception theory or aesthetics is the name which takes part in the
literary world, gives reader responsibility as well as an author about
meaning or interpretation of author's works and analyze reader's
function in this field. It's a matter of debate or study, who give a
meaning to the work. When does the work have a meaning? Who
constitutes the meaning? Reader or author? In the context of our
subject, in what way does the reception process realize for theater
audience and children's theater audience? Is there a difference between
adult theater and children's theater? The subject of this study is to
answer this question "In what way does the reception of thechildren's
theater audience group realize among the children 4 aged and older in
our country? " in the light of the cognitive development theory of Piaget
and the reception aesthetics of W. Iserand we grounded the observations
that were made during the children's plays and the interviews made after
the play.
Keywords: Theatre for children, Reception, Iser, Piaget
Introduction
Reception aesthetics or theory (Rezeptionsasthetik) is a name given to various
theories which study reader's function corresponding with the meaning and the
interpretation of literary works. After the 1960s, the reception theory is a theory
that the character connected with time or place was kept dark and this theory
gives the reader responsibility for revealing various points. (Moran:1994:221) To
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him, the meaning cannot be disclosed availably in the work. The reader
constitutes the meaning based on certain clues and this connected to his own
accumulation of knowledge during the reading process. At that time, can we say
it in this way: there are two texts constituted which create the meaning of the
text in other words, give the text meaning. These are the text written by the
author and the new text constituted by the reader starting from the text, in
short, the new text generated by the interchange between the reader and the
text. What really matters is the role of the reader. Which type of connection is
made between the text and the reader that the meaning of the text arises and the
work realizes? How does the reader participate in the creation work? What can
be his contribution to the work? It's a matter of debate or study, who give a
meaning to the work. Who constitute the meaning of the work? The reader or the
author? The reader constitutes the meaning in the way that he fills in the blanks
of the author or the meaning is constituted by the selected words of the author?
In the process of searching answers of these questions, the situation becomes more
complicated if the subject is a theater work, yet the author and the director being
in the first place, decoration, costume, light and other technical factors come into
play within the process from the author to the acting for theater script. Finally,
it meets with the audience. The reception of the audience has the last word but
the work enters into a new reception process at every turn starting from the
author to the audience with each one’s reception.
For Gadamer, the meaning of a literary work is never limited to the purposes
of the author. The work can gain a meaning that the author or the reader cannot
think about in his own period. This instability precisely belongs to the own
character of the work. All of the interpretations are situational and they are
formed and limited to the criterion of a certain culture exposed to historical
change. It is impossible to know the literary work “warts and all”.
(Eagleton:1990:95)
For W.Iser, reading is always a dynamical process, has a complicated
movement and radial structure in time. (…) Reader approaches the work within
the context of preliminary meanings, expectations, and beliefs. Various
specifications of the work are interpreted in this connection, too.
(Eagleton:1990:101) For W.Iser, As the reading process was improving, these
expectations are modified by things beginning to compose that we learned and a
hermetic circle which manipulates from part to whole and manipulates again from
whole to the part. The reader organizes selectively components of the text by
externalizing, internalizing and apparently materializing certain components of
this circle. His purpose is to unify consistently the components of the text
therefore he can constitute a coherent meaning based upon the text.
For Iser, the meaning of a literary work is not apparent, it is constituted
slowly by the reader during the reading process according to certain clues.
"The reader who approaches a text interprets with a certain accumulation of
reading, a sociocultural point of view and a stack of beliefs and expectations and
he carries with a preliminary comprehension arising from this accumulation. In
fact, each reader's comprehension of a text is directly proportionate to his own
global life, dimensions of conscious experiment especially his language ability thus
each interpretive ability is a little interpretation of our own ego. Here, in this
sense, the reading and the interpretation are not only an activity aimed at
grammatical, linear and naked components but also an activity including these
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things, a background and beyond, a surface and deep of the text, its various point
of views, a travel through different meaning categories, an effort and an
occupation." (Ekiz:2007:123)
Any text doesn't gain its own meaning. The meaning of a Kafka's tale
becomes clear in the light of a perspective and a thought of complete Kafka's
works with its own literary context. The literary context in point constructs in
consideration of both synchronic and diachronic literary connections. The
situation is same as Yunus poem and Shakespeare play. (Göktürk:1988:28)
The author cannot say everything according to the reception aesthetics and
the filling process in certain blanks which devolve upon the reader. We remark
the blanks left by the author as empty space or ambiguities. These are various
from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract. The reader unwittingly
fills the special and the simple ones and add essential details but in reality, the
reader constitutes meaning by filling empty spaces. This situation materializes at
an abstract level and it is necessary to touch on the connection between text and
external world in order to clarify the role of the reader about this subject.
(Moran:2004:242) Moran suggests characters that mentioned in the text aren’t
real life characters and he continues. They live in a fictional world but this
fictional world has conventions, traditions, lifestyles and beliefs resembling the
real life in the world. The connection of fictional text to the reality should be
searched in historical, cultural and social components which are found out of the
text. As we say, these come along in text in the form of conventions, traditions,
behavior patterns, world perspectives. Shortly, the connection of fictional text to
the reality is ideological because of this W.Iser concerns himself with the meaning
of the word “reality” before anything else and he dwells on the reality concept. In
history, each historical period explains the meaning of the reality differently
because a certain period has a certain reality concept and this reality is a model
that was systematically constructed by the dominant worldview in that period
thus it is systematized an unstable and incoherent reality and it gains integrity.
It is only connected to the context of its own period. (Moran:2004:222)
Knowledge doesn’t exist in nature independent from the knower in compliance
with the constructivist theory. This theory clarifies both education,
comprehension and epistemology. Knowledge is not independent of the subject.
The subject constitutes the knowledge during the interaction with other subjects
in itself. The subject and its environment are impressed by the constituted
knowledge. The constitution of knowledge is accomplished by the realization of
mental processes. The way and the process of knowledge constitution (and
knowledge) are an individual and inner concept. The most important principle of
constructivism is the proposition that humans effectively constitute their own
perspectives on their own. Education within the frame of constructivism is a
construction of new information and perspectives over old information in
consequence of real experiences. (Şirin:2008:198)
It is obvious that reception theory and constructivist theory correspond to
each other. Both of them give the reader, audience and spectator responsibility in
the presence of a work. Both of them constitute their perspective about the work
in the context of our subject and they add new information over old information
of children's audience for the reader or the theater audience.
Applying for the cognitive development theory of Piaget provides an
important support in order to determine audience’s limits of reception and this
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applicationprovides justification when we need to evaluate in what way the
reception realize for children’s audience. When we study scientific works about
cognitive development, they try to explain how the child perceive and observe the
world around him at different ages.
The cognitive development theory of Piaget (along with discussions in its
some aspects) is an important theory that became instructive for many studies
about children. Bruner and Vygotsky study in this field, too and they put
forward theses different from the one of Piaget's in some points.
The human being observes, studies and explores in the process of learning and
he uses gradually the obtained information in a particular logical framework. At
the same time, this is the process of cognitive development. The cognitive
development is named as a development of active mental activity that provides
individual to understand and learn the world around him. The cognitive
development is the process including the individual's way of thinking and
understanding the world and the environment. This process becomes more
effective and complicated. A child in the process of cognitive development is only
in the process of improving his ability of thinking and understanding the social
environment. (Kol:2011:1)
According to this theory, children exhibit certain behavior patterns in certain
periods and their capacity of perception, problem-solving ability, the ability of
contact and their logic system resemble each other. The period of these behavior
patterns can be longer and shorter in as much as the environment that child is in
but its gradation never changes. Each period is constructed over other periods'
attainments and it has typical specifications peculiar to each period. These
periods are pertinent to the development of children's perception of the world, his
comprehension, and explanation in a regular order.
Periods that Piaget prepared and called cognitive development periods are
classified in this way.
Sensorimotor development (0-2 age) sensorimotor development, the
preoperational stage (2-7 age) (Piaget divided this stage in two substages: the
symbolic function substage (from 2 to 4 age) and the intuitive thought substage
(from 4 to 7 age), the concrete operational stage (from 5 to 11 age) and the
formal operational stage (11 age and above).
In Turkey, as a children's theater audience, plays are prepared aimed at the
children at age 4 and above. In other words, we underline the reactions of the
children in the intuitive thought substage and in the concrete and formal
operational stage and their feedback about the plays in this study.
When examining the characteristics of the child in the intuitive thought
substage, the child at this age (from 4 to 7) his way of thinking is unidirectional
so they see one direction of one situation and one event and he cannot keep in
mind the whole object or events.
The child in the concrete operational stage (from 7 to 11) can solve concrete
problems logically.He can achieve the classification and constitute series. They
are connected to concrete, apparent conditions. As for the ones in the formal
operational stage, they can solve abstract problems. They can see, evaluate
multiple directions of a situation and they can set a course accordingly. They can
advance and reverse stages more than one. They are interested in social issues.
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The cognitive development stages that we mentioned briefly will be a
determinant of children's theater audience and especially characteristics of the
play which will be performed.
A drama performing actualizes in multiple stages and the work is produced at
every turn. The author at the writing stage and the director at the performing
stage put the theater text on the stage by reproducing it according to the
meaning of their perception. It is reshaped by interpretation of the players.
Finally, the process is completed in line with the reception of audience.
Particularly the manner of the audience put the author, the director, and the
audience together for a common goal. Consequently, theater comes into view as
an art which never breaks loose from social relations. It gets into social life and
mutual interaction.
The whole components of theater performance, in other words, the language
of dialogue, scenery, gestures, costume, makeup and intonations of players and
also a great number of other signs make a contribution to unveiling the meaning
of performance. (Esslin:1996:15)
It is said to be children's theater; when considered used signs and the way of
using them, the cognitive development stages of a child audience that we
abovementioned briefly, there can be an interchange between the audience and
the scenery for a reception and the purpose of this interchange is to deal with a
performance being watched with interest by target audience on the other hand, it
approaches the signs which don't fit for the child's cognitive development
stage.These induce the child not to stay focused, thus the ruptures occur in the
triangle of reader, author and text and the process of producing meaning is
interrupted or a different meaning occurs unlike the one that the director aimed
at.
Theater plays are different from other literary types on the subject of the
reception. This difference is a reception of audience reading the text which
appeared as a result of acting it, namely while he is reading the work as a text,
the reception composed in the triangle of author, text, and reader. The reception
and the interpretation of director with the production's acting will get involved in
this process. Here it is a matter of multi-directional process.
Hereby, beyond all question, it is mentioned various sets of people from a
common reader or audience to professional readers like dramaturgist, director or
critic and child audience. On the one hand, "receiver" gives the meaning to the
theater script that starts from the signs in the play script, on the other hand, he
tries to fill in the blanks of the script with the help of his own accumulation.
The children's theater is compatible with the same situation. If we mean
children's theater audience, the child's interpretation of the text is different from
the common audience's in the process of the child's reception. The situation of
the child audience’s preoperational, concrete and formal operational stages
changes in accordance with his way of perception. On the other side, the director
and the scriptwriter must take the audience's processes of reception into
consideration. The child cannot always evaluate the multi-layer structure of the
text. If we approach the subject with simple logic, the way that the child infers
ambiguous meanings from apparent ones varies depending on his age.
Yet another subject, the director must at least take the audience into
consideration pedagogically if the audience is a child. The director's knowledge
about how the children's reception realizes plays a role in order to reunite the
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things the director wanted to tell correctly with the audience. However, the
reception of the director and his way of acting the play are connected directly
with his underlying messages, his way of getting the message etc, all of the
details, the director's worldview, his educational perspective and the way he
observes the children.
You can warn your child with a calm voice against his false step or you can
shout him, too. You can even punish him by intensifying the punishment and
pulling his ears. All of these details determine your pedagogical manner and your
way of getting in contact with the children. It is possible for us to find the traces
of the director's manner and worldview about this subject in the plays that he
organized. He can give the message of the play by adding to the whole as well
with the support of a motto, in other words, he can give it directly, too or there
is threat risk in the content of the given messages. As a consequence, the director
approaches the child with an effective understanding of the society that he lives
in otherwise -not approved-. The approved play determines the society's
perspective of the children who live in this society. This is didactical,
authoritative or democratical, open to critical thinking, liberatory.
Study
This study was constituted by the observations of the children audience in the
theater hall during the play and the interviews with the children at the end of
the play. Questions were prepared in accordance with the children's age group
with the object of the way they perceive. We watched the play and we studied
every script of plays then we evaluated approaches of director and author.
Nevertheless, we watched every play then we observed child audiences, having
only focused on the play and having taken notes. We approved the observations
and we asked questions again to the children at the end of the play.
Different receptions in the triangle of author, director,
and children
"Purple Night, Blue Day” takes sides with the child. It has a structure with a
critical perspective towards adults and it has characteristics which show himself
and show the world he lives into the child. Our hero is a naughty child maybe we
can regard him as hyperactive. He is a little more moving according to other
children in his class. Our authors wrote up the play for the purpose of having
shown this child who was in their world and he even resembled themselves and
they brought this child on stage. The director said the child with an authoritative
and didactical approach "if you continue to misbehave, you are exposed to
these." We see here obviously that the outlook of director and authors on the
child resulted from their different receptions which are related to childhood and
child education.
The authors wanted the child to see himself in a more liberal field. In the
script, there is a cute naughty child who spread his toys and doesn't want to eat.
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The children could watch themselves with pleasure in entertaining scenes if
director and authors had approached the text with the same ideas.
However, the director assumes an attitude which subdues the child rather
than accepts him with his childish characteristics. The director turns the
entertaining dream scene which includes debates between typical childish
naughtiness into a nightmare scene that toys behaved the child badly. These toys
came to life and his friends left him alone with an angry manner.
Naturally, the audiences expressed the given message "he had bad dreams at
night for having misbehaved, we have bad dreams, too if we misbehave and
sadden surroundings like this.
Interpretation of the signs on the stage
"Tree selfish persons at the bus stop" this is a play that expresses missed
opportunities of three selfish persons as a result of their dissension, quarrel and
expresses how they made the world unlivable. In the play in which three clowns
took part, the director, as well as the scriptwriter, wanted to concretely
demonstrate waiting action, experiences and disappearances of the waiting with a
bus stop metaphor.
Gradual increasing stress in the process of the waiting action comes to a head
with a war scene. While the play needed to show horror of war between, smashed
tanks, casualties, and the last hijacked bus by the end of the war scenes which
were fortified by light and effects, in an instant, the play turned into a show that
people having taken sides in the hall cheered the people on stage, it was curiously
supposed who would damage who more, there was a battle cry and the audience
was full of beans. The children left the hall with an excitement which was created
by this magical war environment. First-grade primary school students expressed
that most of them enjoyed the war scene at most and they wanted to watch here
again. In fact, the director/the writer had wanted to how bad the war was. The
powerful war scene surrounded by the violence had destroyed everybody.
Reception
connected
development stage
with
the
child's
cognitive
For the interpretation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" play
peculiar to the children, the children in the hall showed different reactions
according to their ages. Preschool children watched nymph's transformation into
a donkey as an instant event and they were surprised. They asked where the
donkey came from then they weren't interested in it. Instant changes only
interested them. For them, there wasn't a funny event, a man had transformed
into a donkey, that's all!
The older children above 7 years old evaluated one step behind having
thought the humorous dimension of "transformation into a donkey" and they
guessed one step ahead. There was a funny event. In other words, the event
would not be funny, it would be magical if the man had transformed into another
thing instead of a donkey. The children who I put a question to about this said
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that they found funny "immediate transformation of their friend into a donkey
and his oblivion". They watched the transformation in front of them in a
perceptible way and they had fun by having thought the possible events that
could actualize one step ahead. The children above 11 age who passed into the
concrete operational stage had fun, too. The reason they laughed was that they
thought possible confusions and misunderstandings having realized by the
transformation of the nymph into a donkey. Younger ones were interested in the
instantaneous change. Older ones had fun by having thought possible chain of
events.
Things behind the visible one
The most popular and amusing scenes of the play were the quarrel between
two builders who couldn't decide what they would build in the forest by having
said "cutting" or "no burning" and these were their falling, their butting each
other, their clumsy conflicts. The children were supporting the persons on the
stage. They cried and they took sides. In fact, the aim of the builders was to
destroy the forest. Here, two persons masqueraded as Laurel-Hardy were making
their act very nice with funny movements. At the end of the play, they said that
they liked these two builders and they had lots of fun in the children's interview.
When we said "but these are two men who tried to destroy the forest", they said,
"never mind, but they were too funny."
Conclusion
As is seen, the reception is a field which gives the reader/the audience
responsibility for filling in the empty spaces. The audience/the reader explains
the meaning and he filled in the empty spaces in accordance with his own
equipment, capacity, and culture. In additional to this situation, as for the child
audience explains the meaning according to his cognitive development stage, in
other words, he explains it forhis perception capacity. In the case of going out of
his capacity, he breaks the connection of the stage and he is not interested in it.
For this reason, the playwright of the children's play and the director must
determine the target audience by considering the child's cognitive development
stages and he must certainly prepare their plays for this audience's
characteristics.
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