Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Little American History Plays, for Little Americans: A Dramatic Reader for Third and Fourth Grades
You did not need to have a real house or real dishes when you were playing house. Pieces of broken china, shells, or lea'ves were more fun than real dishes; and your house was on the doorstep, in the corner of the yard, or on a bench in the park. The Indian rode horseback on a broomstick, or the soldier carried the broomstick for a gun. Yet even the people who were going past on the street could tell in an instant what you were pretending to be. That was because you were acting so well. It was the way you rocked your baby that showed you were a mother, or the way you poured the make-believe tea that showed you were a lady. Every one knew that the boy who stood so straight with his arms folded was an Indian, and that the boy marching ahead of the column of boys was a captain with his soldiers.
So acting is the way you do things - the way you stand, or talk, or walk, or move your arms and head. It is not what you wear or what you use in your hands.
The plays in this book are to be acted in the school room. What a fine stage the schoolroom is! The desks are rows of houses on streets, or they are seats for a Town Meeting, or the trees of a forest. The drawers in the bookcase are fine steps to climb to a tower or an attic; the teacher's desk makes a breastwork or a blockhouse.
Each class must use its own room and the things in it in its own way. Then the plays will be its own.
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