Learning to Lose

In Stage Play Acting Classes, one of the scenes that we do with kids is a slow motion race.  Our young actors, age five to eight, love this scene but just like the last group of kids who played this scene in acting classes, none of them were willing to lose a race even in the pretend world of acting.  We did not talk about the roles as Winners and Losers this time around, rather we said that one actor would finish and the other actor would trip and then asked who wanted to be the Finisher and who wanted to be the Tripper.  We paired young actors with acting buddies this year and predictably, every young actor decided that their buddy could trip.  We prompted the buddies to make tripping look dramatic and fun.  Some of our young actors were tempted, seriously tempted to trip but none could bring themselves to do it because the unstated fact was obvious--the tripper was the loser.  So this week, our second week of running slow motion races, we asked two acting buddies, Eric and Kate to demonstrate the game again in this way:


We had a good outcome from demonstrating the desirability of the tripping role. Several young actors chose to trip after watching Eric and Kate fight over the opportunity to trip. One young actor managed to have the best of both roles; he tripped and then jumped up and ran fast in order to still win.