Teatergarderoben: Hvordan påvirker estetisk iscenesettelse barns lek, fortellinger og dedikasjon til fiksjonsrammer over tid

Project summary

This study investigates how aesthetic staging influences children’s play, storytelling, and dedication to fiction frames over time. Aesthetic staging is understood as an interaction between the spatial and material design of the room and the adult’s active role as a co creating participant. The study is based on the project The Theatre Wardrobe – The Art of Play, in which a room at Barnas Kulturhus is staged with fabrics, costumes, props, and dramaturgical elements such as light, sound, rituals, and guided transitions to stimulate children’s wonder, imagination, and dramatic play. The project examines how impulses arising from the room’s aesthetic qualities and the pedagogue’s staging decisions initiate, sustain, and structure play. It further explores how children respond to these impulses through role taking, bodily expression, and narrative exploration. Observational data and photographic documentation of traces left in the room (materials in use, spatial transformations, arrangement of objects) are analysed to understand how children process, extend, and recreate their play experiences, and how these processes contribute to the expansion of the fictional universe of the play. The study highlights the importance of aesthetic frames in supporting children’s creative processes, interaction, and collaborative narrative construction. It also emphasises the role of the pedagogue as a co creating play leader who, through dramaturgical techniques and poetic retelling, facilitates continuity, focus, and shared meaning making. The aim of the study is to develop knowledge about how aesthetic staging can be understood as a dynamic relationship between space, materiality, and adult involvement, and look at how this shapes children’s play, storytelling, and engagement with fiction frames over time.