How to Recognize Dramatic Talent When You See It: And Then What?

Abstract

Dramatic ability is not limited to the artistic realm, for we recognize that each of us plays roles and that human behavior has a performative quality. Social role analysis is ready to confirm Shakespeare's well-known claim1 that all people in the world are merely players.2 Nevertheless, there are differences between artistic and social dramatic ability. Though developing a performance psychology in which we take the work of the actor as a paradigm in our exploration of aspects of human functioning, we nonetheless do not regard the acting abilities involved in the social and artistic roles as identical.3 In fact, they characterize different concepts as they relate to theatrical performance. There are defined personality dimensions that distinguish professional actors from nonactors.4 While preparing this study from the perspective of aesthetic education, I became aware that the wealth of knowledge about theatrical performance reveals a large gap between theatrical practice and theatrical theories. The gap can be clearly traced from the eighteenth century when Denis Diderot, in his Paradoxe sur le Comedien, distinguished between good, mediocre, and poor actors and was concerned with the dilemma of the actor's emotions on stage.5 In the twentieth century the paradox of acting is still a central thesis in theater research and has produced Stanislavskian and Brechtian theories.6 This study explores in an aesthetic education context the notion of children's dramatic ability and ways to assign meaning to it. There are three divergent parts. The first concerns a framework in search of a theory. The second presents talent development perceptions according to Dorothy Heathcote and Gavin Bolton. The third is an empirical outline of Israeli drama education from the drama teacher's perspective, revealing the teacher's personal practical knowledge as a crucial component in the identification of criteria for dramatic talent.