APTER THE WHY AND HOW I. THE CHALLENGE OF A REAL NEED II. THE PLACE OF DRAMATIZATION IN THE CHURCH PAGE 3 6 10 14 26 VI. MAKING MISSIONS REAL THROUGH DRAMATIZATION..... 34 VII. PAGEANTS FOR SPECIAL OCCASIONS III. SOURCES OF MATERIAL PART II THE WHAT 37 41 I THE CHALLENGE OF A REAL NEED "Let's give a play!' 66 Sure thing let's do it!" "Just our class-so it will be our own!" "Yes, and if we advertise it well, we can make heaps of money!" "And have just lots of fun doing it, too!" 66 'But, what shall we give? It's got to be something different, and funny, of course." "I know! We'll send off to Big Town-I heard of a publisher of plays there who'll send us a bunch of samples to choose from. Somebody said that he's got just tons of good things." "Great! Let's do it you write the letter tonight, so we can get right at it.” Perhaps the above sounds like an imaginary conglomeration of miscellaneous sentences-possibly the product of an overwrought brain. But no; very many teachers of young people will recognize these words as by no means imaginary, but very real and quite familiar through much repetition. And the desire to "act out" the lesson, to "play" the story which has been told in public school or Sunday school, is not only common in the children's classes, it is the perfectly natural expression of that wonderful heritage of the child from the development of the race-the dramatic instinct. In the Introduction which Prof. Norman E. Richardson has written for the pamphlets in that admirable "American Home Series" he says most truly: What faith is to the adult the dramatic instinct is to the child; it is the substance, the substantial realization of things hoped for. It is the power to make things happen. It is the victory that overcomes the prosaic, sawdust affairs of life. The guidance of the development of that instinct may well be regarded then as not only not outside of the realm of the religious |