Company is all about experiments. Some work – some are there to improve for next year. One experiment that I revived from my grad school days – – is a day of playing with toys. That’s right. Everyone brought a toy – or in some cases a bundle of toys – and set up their small play space in the Blackbox. The mission was to simply play – as they had done years ago – hopefully as they did before the technology bug took over every breathing moment. They thought this was going to be oh, so easy – but it proved to be a bit more challenging. The toys were so fun to set up and provided a good solid five minutes of novel entertainment, but then what? What does a teenager do with a Power Ranger, Bratz, Lego, Playdough, Crayon after the first few minutes. It took them a while to get engaged in the activity, but slowly almost everyone was able to turn back time and turn on their imagination.
I am sure that if administrators or touring guests stopped by the Blackbox, they would have been a bit questioning as to why valuable school time was being spent on the floor putting on dresses on Bratz. But the exercise served the purpose of the day. Students were able to engage their imagination in a way they hadn’t done in years. They were making up stories in their heads, they were going on adventures and creating characters – all while holding some cheap pieces of plastic!
There were two revelations for me during the process: 1. It is difficult for teenagers to access their child. They are either afraid to be vulnerable to this or they go to acting childish and not child—like. It was far easier to make fun of children playing with toys then to genuinely play with them. That was a valuable insight. – and –
2. I also noticed a few students getting very misty eyed or even crying as they played with toys. They were experiencing a bit of longing and pain from the past. These toys were triggering the past and the attendant emotions. These toys were teaching the most elegant acting lesson possible. Some of my experiments work indeed!