International Journal of Education & the Arts

Volume 1 Number 5

October 25, 2000

"The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery":
Arts Educators Collaborate To Create a
Musical Play for Pre-schoolers

Barbara Poston-Anderson
Peter de Vries
University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract
This article outlines how an arts-based collaboration unfolded between a music educator and a drama educator in a tertiary institution. The particular context was their creation of a musical play for pre-school children entitled, "The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery." Written from both educators' perspectives, this commentary provides insights into their collaborative process from the scripting and composition through to the rehearsal and performance stages. Reflecting on their journey together, the researchers identify the main characteristics which they believe contributed to their perceptions of a successful collaboration.

Phone Call (December 1999)

Barbara: Peter, it's Barbara Poston-Anderson calling. I lecture in drama education at UTS. Congratulations on getting the position as music education lecturer!

Peter: Thank you, Barbara.

Barbara: Is it true that you have an interest in writing children's musicals?

Peter: Yes, I do.

Barbara: So do I. Wouldn't it be great to work on one together?

Peter: Excellent idea. Maybe we could use the musical as a basis for some research, too.

Barbara: Why not? Let's talk more when you get here.

Peter: I look forward to that.

          That's how two arts educators, Barbara and Peter, decided to work together to write a musical play for pre- schoolers entitled, "The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery." What did they perceive were the factors that made for their successful collaboration? This question will be explored in two sections. The first presents specific information related to the collaborative process as it evolved. The educators' backgrounds and their reflections about writing and rehearsing the play are shared in order to provide insight into how their collaborative relationship worked in practice.
          The second section provides an analysis of this information focusing on the identification of key factors that contributed to the researchers' perception of a successful collaboration. Psychological contract theory (Rousseau, 1995), particularly those aspects relating to interactions between individuals in voluntary situations, is used as a broad theoretical basis for understanding the key elements of this working partnership. Particular reference is made to relational/social and transactional/task dimensions which shape the discussion of the study's qualitative findings. In addition, comparison of these case study findings with factors identified in collaborative research in other fields, in particular, Bozeman, Street and Fiorito's study which analysed positive and negative behaviours of co-authors in management (1999), and Baldwin and Austin's investigation of faculty research collaboration in higher education (1995), enable us to situate our study within the broader collaborative research context.
 

The Collaboration Process

Our Backgrounds

          Peter. I lecture in music education at the University of Technology, Sydney. At the time of writing I have been in this job just six months. Prior to this appointment, I taught music in the primary (elementary) school and lectured part-time in music education at another tertiary institution in a neighbouring state. To date my research interests have been in teacher autobiography. As an arts practitioner, I compose choral music and write children's fiction.

          Barbara. I lecture in the area of drama education with particular emphasis in children's theatre. My own academic background ranges from undergraduate work in speech and theatre arts to postgraduate work in a range of fields including: education, rhetoric and public address, librarianship and medieval studies. In addition to my academic teaching, I have been an English teacher and teacher-librarian in schools and am a storyteller for children. I transferred into the Faculty of Education (UTS) eighteen months ago from another Faculty in which I had been an academic for seventeen years.

Our Reflections: How We Wrote the Musical Play

          Peter. January 19th is the day we first met in person to begin our collaboration. I liked the fact that Barbara was receptive to establishing guidelines for the project immediately. I suspected this would help to focus our efforts and ensure we would not waste time.
          Barbara brought a book of nursery rhymes to our meeting, our initial idea being to build the musical play around children's rhymes. We browsed through the book together, looking for characters and situations that appealed. We read twenty rhymes aloud before finding "Tinker Tailor," which we both thought could work as an overall framework for our play.
          The eight characters in this rhyme—a rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant and chief—were all distinct types. We decided to attach each of them to a more specific character in another rhyme. For example, the doctor became the grown up "Little Miss Muffet," the poor man became "Simple Simon," and the chief became Mother Kitten from "The Three Little Kittens." We anticipated that the children's prior knowledge of these nursery rhyme characters would enhance their recognition of and favourable response to the characters in our play.

          Barbara. In the tongue twister "Peter Piper's Pickled Peppers" we found the key conflict to link these characters. What if a thief stole Peter's peppers? What if the play developed as a mystery with characters providing Peter with clues to help him find his missing peppers? An introductory scene could set the conflict and a concluding scene could bring everything together to reveal the thief's identity. We agreed that this idea had both dramatic and musical possibilities.
          We divided up the script writing task between us. We agreed to write each scene as a self-contained unit. The advantage of this episodic structure, consistent with early childhood research which indicates that young children respond favourably to "cumulative" stories (Huck, 1993, p. 22), was that it would enable a flexible presentation of the play. Any scene between the introduction and the conclusion could be enacted in any order, providing the opportunity for building in audience participation during the performance to decide what comes next.
          In addition to structural considerations, several additional concepts governed the script development. First was the knowledge that a children's play requires "a good storyline" with a "well-defined focus" (Wood, 1997, p. 28; Warren, 1993, p. 8). In our play this central problem was set up in the first scene as Peter enters crying with an empty basket and his friend, Owl, tries to discover what is wrong.

Owl: Peter! What's wrong? (Owl gives a hanky to Peter, who blows his nose loudly) Let me guess. Is it because.you're sick?

Peter: No!

Owl: Is it because you're hungry?

Peter: (Crying) No!

Owl: Whatever could it be then? (To children) Do you have any ideas? (accepts idea from audience and asks) Is it because you're (fill in idea)?

Peter: NO!

Owl: (To children) It's not that either! (Peter shows Owl empty basket) (Gasps) Oh! I think I know. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? Is that right?

Peter: (nods) My peppers are gone. They've disappeared.

Owl: Someone's taken them? (Peter nods sadly) Who?

          This dramatic presentation of the problem aimed to arouse the children's curiosity immediately and to engage their willingness to help the two main characters solve the mystery. This opening scene also provided an example of direct interaction with the children, a technique frequently used in the play. This strategy builds on the idea that "children enjoy being active participants rather than passive spectators" (Wood, 1997, p. 16). Among the types of participation built into the script are direct questioning of the children (e.g., "Do you know who's taken the peppers?"; "Can you help us?"); active involvement in actions for rhymes (e.g., Incy Wincy Spider); and a stretch break during which children stand and actively exercise with Peter and Owl.
          In writing the script, humour, "a vital ingredient" in children's plays (Wood, 1997, p. 39), was also kept in mind. Dialogue and actions were created for the characters with the realisation that actors would develop these elements more fully during rehearsal as they create their larger-than-life nursery rhyme characters.

          Peter. Musically, we decided to base our composition and performance decisions on our knowledge of how musical development occurs in pre-school children. We chose familiar rhymes as the basis for the music rather than composing original lyrics because we recognised that by the age of five children know a wide repertoire of standard nursery songs and can perform recognition memory tasks better with them than they can with unfamiliar material (Dowling, 1982). Since children would already know the words, they could focus on the related musical and movement activities we would develop for each rhyme.
          Once we chose the nursery rhymes for the play, we looked at the ones that already had songs associated with them. For rhymes without songs, we composed melodies. In keeping with the existing songs, pitches were restricted to the pentatonic scale with much repetition. Often the first two musical phrases of a song were simply repeated to complete the song, as in the traditional song (see "Lucy Lockett) and in the composed song "Little Drops of Water." Alternatively, in a four phrase song at least two phrases were repeated, as in the composed "Wise Old Owl." Use of such repetition builds on the findings of Davidson, McKernon, and Gardner (1981), who indicate that after learning words of a song children aged five then focus on repetition in a song.
          Because discriminating between louder and softer has been shown to be a significant musical development in children aged five to six years (Shuter-Dyson, 1981), dynamic contrasts were also built into the songs. Research in the sequential acquisition of musical cognition verifies that dynamics precede rhythm, melody and form (McDonald and Simons,1989); and that volume precedes duration and pitch (Zimmerman, 1984). Our aim was to be consistent with these findings.
          For children of pre-school age, words are learned first in songs, followed by rhythm, contour, then intervals (Moog, 1976; Petzold, 1966; Updegraff, Heileger, and Learned, 1938). We chose to be guided by this research when developing our approach to teaching the children the songs during the performance. Basically, a phrase by phrase technique accompanied with movement and specific actions was used. This decision was motivated by Dunne- Sousa's (1990) finding that with young children movement is more helpful in identifying and learning a song than speech rhythm or melody.
          In addition, during the performance, the children's active musical participation was encouraged by having them "help out" by keeping the beat in different ways. For example, in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" children beat the rhythm on their hands and lap, an approach based on the view that keeping the beat in time significantly develops in pre-school aged children (Davidson, McKernon, and Gardner, 1981; Rainbow,1977; Thackray, 1972).
          Movement in the form of using the hands and body to trace the melodic contour of a song was used in sharing the songs "Mary, Mary" and "Jack Be Nimble." The decision to use this specialised movement concept in helping children learn a song was influenced by Dowling's (1982) research which advocates learning melodic contour prior to specific intervals.
          Concepts often regarded as being "beyond" pre- schoolers, such as singing in canon and partner songs, were also trialed. This was done in the simplest possible way with the cast of characters leading the singing and encouraging audience participation. For example, the simple, well-known nursery song, "Lucy Lockett", was sung in canon, with the concept of singing in canon being directly explained to the children. In the conclusion, two songs are sung together as partner songs. The aim in using these two more musically advanced concepts was to determine whether children could follow them when presented in a performance context.

 

Our Perceptions of the Script Writing Process

          Peter. I loved the idea of writing a story with dialogue, but quickly realised through engaging with the playwriting process how important it was to understand and be guided from the start by what works best with this age level. I was glad we decided to examine the research literature in our two fields before we began writing. Knowing what researchers have learned about artistic development of young children was useful to both of us in developing the script and writing the songs.

          Barbara. I was amazed to see how quickly the script developed. We worked well together despite our gender, age and disciplinary differences and the fact that we didn't know each other prior to the start of the collaboration—all of which had the potential for being problems but were not. Working on the same campus meant we had frequent contact with each other and were able to talk to each other face-to-face to bounce ideas off each other. I didn't feel edgy the way I sometimes do when undertaking group projects with others. I think this was largely due to the give and take which developed between the two of us. Nether one of us tried to dominate the project. Peter listened to my ideas and had good ideas himself. I respected his knowledge, judgement and the focused and efficient way in which he worked. I felt as though we complemented each other creatively very well. Although we had many of the same skills, which enabled us to appreciate the equal importance of music and dialogue to the production, we also each had less well developed areas in which the other was stronger.

          Peter. What a wonderful flow of ideas! In two months by myself I doubt if I could have come up with all these ideas. The collaborative process felt great--no undue pressure, just the impetus to really work on this and achieve our nominated goals. Fortunately we had similar ideas about how the musical play should develop. We spoke openly throughout the playwriting stage about our expectations and feelings. Most importantly, we have both been highly committed to completing the musical play. We were both very passionate about this project, which naturally contributed to the success of the collaboration.

          Barbara. The finished script was seamless. I couldn't tell where Peter's contribution ended and mine began. Instinctively I knew it would work even though in places I felt there was still too much "tell" and not enough "show." Fine-tuning of the script was done during rehearsal.

How We Rehearsed the Musical Play

          Peter. March—the first week of lectures. Barbara's drama students, enrolled in the fourth semester of their children's theatre major, saw the draft script for the first time. I wandered into the class and watched as small groups read through the scenes. Students responded enthusiastically, trying out various characterisations. Auditions followed this class session and were well attended.

          Barbara. The two students who first read together at the auditions were the ones who got the main parts of Owl and Peter. They had a special spark which brought the characters to life. Others fit well into the smaller character roles. Performing for younger children interested them all, because previously they had acted for older primary-aged children. This production was something new and different for them.
          Rehearsing any play is a challenge, but one which involves twenty-one student actors was particularly daunting. On the first day of rehearsal, the initial warm- up exercise was to re-enact a well-known nursery rhyme with movement and sound. Most groups chose to "spoof" the nursery rhyme, playing it for its "adult" humour. Notable was the rendition of "Hot Cross Buns" in which buns become bums. At this point I realised that finding a "sincerity" in nursery rhyme re-enactment that matched the children's developmental levels might be difficult for these students.

          Peter. During rehearsals the performers freely made suggestions for improvements to the musical play. Regarding the music, they suggested a musical introduction made up of a medley of the songs, special sound effects (i.e., rain and thunder), and tempo changes to certain songs. During rehearsals, the singers themselves focused mainly pitch; that is "singing in tune." They freely commented on each other's pitching.

 

Our Perceptions of the Rehearsal Process

          Peter. I was not always able to be at rehearsals because I often had lectures at the same time. When I was present, it was mainly in the role of rehearsing the songs. Ten roles involved singing solo. Although most students felt fine about that, some were hesitant. These were drama students whose first love was acting so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

          Barbara. The three-week rehearsal period was impossibly short. At times I wondered how we would do it. "Arrive on time," "Learn your lines," "Stay in character"—I'm sure the students thought I sounded like a broken record. I tried to accomplish as much as I could in each rehearsal. Sometimes I got so involved that I didn't see Peter when he entered the drama studio. He always fit right into whatever was happening. We never got in each other's way. Unlike the writing process which involved us both in every aspect, we now concentrated on our own particular area of expertise. I took the dominant role in staging the play, while Peter rehearsed the actors in their songs and worked with the keyboardist. This division of labour was acceptable to us both and was necessary due to the short time frame. Throughout the rehearsal period, Peter's enthusiasm and encouragement helped to balance my frustration about tight deadlines and actors missing rehearsals. It amazed me how calm he remained.

The Performances

          Two performances of "The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery," each lasting 55 minutes, were presented on March 21st and 22nd in the university drama studio which has a 75 person capacity. The child audience for both performances was drawn from the local on-campus day care centre. An estimate of the ages of the children attending the play ranged from three to eight years. Children were seated around the edges of a tri-level acting area consisting of a lowered square pit in front backed by the higher floor level on which a portable platform was placed. Most children sat directly in front of the pit area with a direct view of all levels. Only these acting areas were lit by stage lighting. Live music and sound effects were provided for the songs using a keyboard. The accompaniments were kept simple in line with the songs. Some songs were performed acapella by the actors.
          During the performances both of us completed written evaluations. Afterwards we agreed that, even though the play may have been a little long for the youngest, it was well received by the children. This was evidenced by their active involvement with the characters (e.g., calling out encouragement, laughing) and their participation in the songs and actions. This perception was shared by the actors, one of whom wrote: "The children loved the show, the older members of the audience loved the kids' responses and participated in the songs and actions, and we loved the adults laughing."

The Collaborative Process

          We perceive that our collaboration was successful. Several key factors contributed to this. First there was the contextual element. Both of us are employed at the same institution and work at the same campus in the same Faculty. This enabled constant face-to-face communication throughout the project. We were able to meet together, separate to do our writing, and then reconvene to fuse everything together—all within several days. Because the music room and the drama studio are literally metres apart, it was easy for Peter to slip into rehearsals between classes or for us to hold impromptu meetings to discuss our progress. We are also fortunate because collaborative work is supported by our Faculty. Although there are no formal policies, it is understood that such ventures are valued. This enabled us to proceed confidently with our project knowing it would be recognised as part of our academic workload.
          From the start, we were both highly motivated to make this project a success. Within our Faculty, Peter was a recent appointment and Barbara had relocated within the last eighteen months from somewhere else in the University. Both of us were anxious to make a scholarly contribution to the Faculty and thought that this project would be an appropriate way to do it. Likewise, as colleagues who would be working together in the creative arts for some time, we realised that the sooner we developed a positive working relationship the better.
          Interpersonal aspects, part of the relational/social dimension, were also perceived as essential to the success of our collaboration. From the beginning, we respected each other's talents. Despite differences in academic rank, we regarded each other as equals. Neither one of us had hidden agendas or tried to "compete" with the other. We were each willing to give and take and to accept constructive criticism.
          With regard to the task itself, the transactional/task dimension, we both had a high commitment to complete the project. Our goals were similar from the start. We knew we wanted to create a musical play for pre- schoolers. The fact that we both had previous music and drama experience was beneficial to our appreciation of the importance of both areas to the play's development. We also both agreed that the musical should be consistent with research relating to the musical and drama development of pre-schoolers. All of these factors helped to unify our focus throughout the writing, rehearsing and performance stages of the project.
          Our roles at various project stages evolved naturally. In the first stage of script development, by mutual consent, the scenes were divided equally. Peter took most of the responsibility for composing the music. In the second stage, rehearsing the play, our roles became more differentiated with Barbara blocking and directing the script while Peter rehearsed the music. When preparing manuscripts for publication based on the project, we discussed the overall structure and direction, then Peter usually took the lead in developing an initial draft, while Barbara completed the revisions. This built on each of our strengths, Peter being a fluent writer who gets ideas down quickly while Barbara likes to take time to fine-tune the phrasing. These work style differences did not cause conflict between us, but did involve adjusting our expectations related to time frames for publication submission.
          What we have learned from our experience of working together on this project is consistent with findings from qualitative research studies on collaboration in other fields. For example, of the six dynamics on which collaborators in higher education research define their relationships and work processes (Baldwin & Austin, 1995, p. 60), we found "proximity of partners"(i.e. same institution), "explicit definitions" of roles and "shared responsibility" to be most useful in describing factors which facilitated our situation. We also found that a similarity of standards and expectations enabled us to work with a definite agreed purpose and outcome in mind. We believe this contributed greatly to the crisis- free script development stage and to our satisfaction with the end product of our collaboration, the musical play and its performance.
          Also, with regard to "positive" behaviours in the process of research collaboration in management (Bozeman, Street & Fiorito, 1999, p. 163), "consideration" and "dependability" were ranked highly. In our collaborative relationship, too, consideration was a key factor, especially the social/relational elements of mutual respect and valuing of each other's ideas. Because we both realised we had the best interests of the project in mind, we were able to give and accept constructive feedback without taking offence. This was a critical factor in helping us to improve the play as we progressed toward the performance. Although unstated, we also trusted each other to complete our commitments to the project.
          In the process of creating "The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery," we have built on each of our strengths to accomplish more together than we could have alone. For us, working collaboratively has been a positive experience with the added benefit that it has resulted in a new musical play for pre-schoolers.

References

Baldwin, R., & Austin, A. (1995). Toward greater understanding of faculty research collaboration. The Review of Higher Education 19(2), pp. 45-70.

Bozeman, D., Street, M. & Fiorito, J. (1999). Positive and negatiave coauthor behaviors in the process of research collaboration. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality 14(2), pp. 159-177.

Davidson, L., McKernon, P., & Gardner, H. (1981). The acquisition of song: A developmental approach, in Documentary report of the Ann Arbor symposium on the applications of psychology to the teaching and learning of music. Reston, Virginia: MENC.

Dowling, W. J. (1982). Melodic information processing and its development. In D. Deutsch (Ed.), The psychology of music. New York: Academic Press.

Dunne-Sousa, D. (1990). The effect of speech rhythms, melody, and movement on song identification and performance of preschool children. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Music Educators National Conference, Washington.

Fetterman, D. M. (1979). Study of the Career Intern Program. Final Report. Mountain View, CA: RMC Research Corporation.

Fox, M. (1984). How to teach drama to infants. Sydney: Ashton Scholastic.

Gardner, H. (1979). Development psychology after Piaget: An approach in terms of symbolization. Human Development, 22, 73-78.

Goldberg, M. (1974). Children's theatre: A philosophy and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Heathcote, D. (1984). Collected writings on education and drama. L. Johnson and C. O'Neill (Eds.) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Huck, C. (1993). Children's literature in the elementary school. (5th ed.) Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.

Logsdon, D. M., Taylor, N. E., & Blum, I. H. (1988). It was a good learning experience: The problems and trials of implementing and evaluating a parent participation program. In D. M. Fetterman (Ed.), Qualitative Approaches to Evaluation in Education. New York: Praeger.

McDonald, D., & Simons, G. (1989). Musical growth and development: Birth through six. New York: Schirmer Books.

Moog, H. (1976). The musical experience of the pre- school child. Trans. C. Clarke. London: Schott.

Nagy, P., Laskey, A., & Allison, P. (1993). Evaluation as harvesting: Drama in education as tender fruit. Canadian Journal of Education, 18(2), pp. 117-131.

Petzold, R. G. (1966). Auditory perception of musical sounds by children in the first six grades. Cooperative Research Project No. 1051, University of Wisconsin.

Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul.

Rainbow, E. L. (1977). A longitudinal investigation of the rhythmic abilities of pre-school aged children. Council for Research in Music Education Bulletin, 50, 55-61.

Ramsey, J. H. (1983). The effects of age, singing ability, and instrumental experiences on preschool children's melodic perception. Journal of Research in Music Education, 31(2), 133-145.

Rousseau, D. M. (1995). Psychological Contracts in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Shuter-Dyson, R., & Gabriel, C. (1981). The psychology of musical ability (2nd ed.). London: Methuen.

Sims, W. L. (1990). Characteristic's of young children's music concept discrimination. Psychomusicology, 9(1), 79-88.

Suthers, L. and Larkin, V. (1997). An examination of a young child's responses to performance: Implications for arts curricula. Journal for Australian Research in Early Childhood Education 1, 115-122.

Thackray, R. (1972). Rhythmic abilities in children. London: Novello.

Updegraff, R., Heileger, L., & Learned, J. (1938). The effect of training upon the singing ability and musical interest of three-, four- and five-year-old children. University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, 14, 83-121.

Warren, K. (1993). Drama for young children. Drama 1(3) ,7-9.

Warren, K. (1993). Empowering children through drama. In W. Schiller (Ed.) Issues in Expressive Arts: Curriculum for Early Childhood: An Australian Perspective. London: Gordon and Breach .

Way, B. (1981). Audience participation: Theatre for young people. Boston: Walter H. Baker.

Way, B. (1967). Development through drama. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.

Wolcott, H. (1984). Ethnographers sans ethnography: The evaluation compromise. In D. M. Fetterman (Ed.), Ethnography in Educational Evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

Wood, D. (1997). Theatre for children: A guide to writing, adapting, directing and acting. London: Faber and Faber.

Zimmerman, M. P. (1993). An overview of developmental research in music. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 116, 1-23.

Zimmerman, M. P. (1984). The relevance of Piagetian theory for music education. International Journal of Music Education, 3, 31-34.

About the Authors

Barbara Poston-Anderson
Associate Professor Barbara Poston-Anderson lectures in education at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is a creative scholar in the Centre for Research and Education in the Arts, and has research interests in children studies. She has written a number of plays and musicals that have been performed throughout Australia.

Peter deVries
Dr Peter deVries lectures in education at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has written and published choral music, instrumental music for beginning instrumentalists, and mystery/adventure novels for upper primary school children. His research interests are teacher autobiography, peer tutoring in music, and Arts education collaboration.

   home   |   articles   |   abstracts   |   editors   |   submit   |   subscribe   |  

You are visitor number since August 27, 2007.