[accessibleimage] Blind Youngsters Learn from Plays

Blind Youngsters Learn from Plays

Dramatic Arts Project in 30 Schools Teaches Them the Patterns of Behavior

They Quickly Gain Poise

by F. Fraser Bond

THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 1963

American Foundation for the Blind

"The play's the thing" in the education of sightless youngsters. This is the
conclusion reached by the American Foundation for the Blind at 15 West
Sixteenth Street, which for the past three years, with aid from the
Rockefeller Foundation, has conducted a dramatic arts project in thirty
schools for the blind throughout the country. This project, in addition to
the individual coaching of 952 blind children, has trained 228 teachers in
these institutions to carry on dramatic instruction as an integral part of
the school program. Officials of the foundation feel this work has proved a
forward step in the education of the blind.

The project sprang from the conviction of M. C. Migel, president of the
American Foundation for the Blind, that while participation in plays held
educational value for all children, dramatic training would especially
benefit youngsters who are deprived of sight.

Trained by Ruth Vivian

This three-year dramatic project was prefaced by an experimental summer
course for teachers of the blind conducted at Monroe, N.Y., by the character
actress Ruth Vivian, who commuted from Broadway, where she was then
appearing in "The Man Who Came to Dinner." With this teaching group Miss
Vivian worked out an adaptation of regular stage techniques to suit the
special needs of young blind actors.

On this basis the foundation devised a five-week course for each school to
include the production of a full-length play for senior students, a one-act
play for junior students and lecture and laboratory work for faculty members
in such phases of dramaturgy as selection of play, preliminary study of
play, cutting, casting, preparation of parts, readings, points for reading,
preparation for rehearsals, working out the business of the play, principles
of direction and stage technique, making the prompt scripts, stage
terminology, scene construction, technique of make-up, costuming, lighting,
etc. Although the tendency of blind children is to curtail their activities
and to cultivate too sedentary habits, coaches have found the children
welcomed the added stimuli and were eager to respond to direction which they
felt was leading them into new fields of imaginative and physical
experience. The totally blind soon "forgot to remember" to be led about the
stage as they were at the beginning of rehearsals. They quickly gained poise
and greater independence and naturalness of movement.

Departments Correlated

A number of schools have made use of the foundation's course to correlate
the work of other departmeats. In schools at Staunton, Va., Batavia, N.Y.,
and Vancouver, Washington, teachers of shop work undertook to build the
stage scenery as a project for their boys.

In Washington, students in the art department, which includes courses in
sculpture and pottery, further enhanced the production by contributing some
of their work to the stage decoration. In Arizona a girls' sewing class did
much of the sewing on the costumes. In Colorado the students acted as
property men.

Dr. Berthold Lowenfeld, director of educational research for the American
Foundation for the Blind, who directed the project through its nation-wide
service, reports that in each school visited by the foundation's dramatic
coaches their work has developed a valuable byproduct--a new sense of
alertness and general mental stimulation which the blind students carry over
to their other studies. The foundation is ending its dramatic project this
fall with classes now in progress at the Michigan School for the Blind,
followed by the final course at the Kansas State School for the Blind,
Kansas City.

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