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Friday, February 15, 2013

Children Play-Acting

Children can learn the value of communicating via the arts and get practice doing such when various theatrical opportunities come to town. They can participate in this means of story-telling by stepping into a story, instead of just hearing or narrating it.

But parents should read scripts before auditions. Dramatic story-telling is a great art form. And it has more value than just for entertainment. I personally learned many life lessons via radio drama growing up, as we didn't have a television until my early teen years. The best stories are those which reflect real truth. Often, the stories which stand the test of time do so because of their success in exemplifying some particular truth(s). Messing with these stories in significant ways changes the message and seriously runs the risk of propagating a lie. When our children are told that big bad wolves, dragons, and ogres aren't really bad, then they're subtly told that evil, if it really exists, is simply in the imaginations of your old-fashioned simple-minded parents since they are probably the ones who first told you that dragons, big wolves, and self-centered step-mothers are bad.

I'd much rather my child play a bad guy in a good story than a good guy in a bad story. The stories that people like (and we prove it with our dollars) are those in which the heroes and heroines most closely resemble the lovers of the Song of Solomon. The Hero in that story is, of course, the Lord and Redeemer of the universe, Jesus Christ.

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