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Analyzed episodes highlight dyadic roles, pleasure in fear-themed scenarios, and how media and cultural narratives supply roles and plotlines children extend in their dark play.",{"@graph":14,"@context":76},[15,34,55],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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study?","Question",{"text":62,"@type":63},"The study explores children’s symbolic play involving themes of fear and darkness, emphasizing binary oppositions—especially self versus other—and the dyadic scenarios children enact.","Answer",{"name":65,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":66},"How was the research conducted?",{"text":67,"@type":63},"It is based on a year-long qualitative study with seven children aged four to ten, observing play with toys and dolls both at home and in virtual settings such as Roblox.",{"name":69,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":70},"Which ideas from earlier scholars are used to frame the concept of dark play?",{"text":71,"@type":63},"The authors draw on Brian Sutton-Smith’s discussion of darker forms of play and Richard Schechner’s notion of “dark play” as performance that engages taboo themes, violence, and disturbing aspects of human nature.",{"name":73,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":74},"Why do the authors argue dark play matters for young 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Constructions of Self and Other  \n•  \nSandra Chang-Kredl, Dan Mamlok, and Vivek Venkatesh  \nThe authors explore children’s symbolic play that involves themes of fear and darkness, and they investigate the nature of children’s binary oppositions, particularly between self and other. Their account is based on a year-long qualitative study they conducted with seven children, four to ten years of age. They observed the children engage with play materials, including toys and dolls, at home and on virtual sites such as Roblox. The play episodes they analyze highlight children’s dyadic roles and scenarios and the pleasure of their play involving themes of fear. The authors also address the media and cultural representations that provide roles and narratives for the children to extend this dark play. Key words: binary oppositions; cultural narratives;  \ndark play; self and other; symbolic play  \nBrian Sutton-Smith (1997) writes that adult esteem of children’s play depends on its links to imagination, development, and progress, yet this notion of children’s play—and broader social beliefs about children’s innocence—tends to exclude darker forms of play such as aggressive, destructive, rough, rude, or obscene play and nonsensical fantasies. Richard Schechner, an American theater director and scholar in performance studies, originally coined the term “dark play.” Schechner (1993) describes a type of performance or theatrical experience that explores intense and provocative themes and deals with taboo subjects, violence, and disturbing aspects of human nature. Schechner argues that dark play affords the expression of desires, fears, and anxieties while pushing the boundaries of conventional theater and challenging the audience’s comfort levels and expectations.  \nSutton-Smith (2008) discusses Richard Schechner’s dark play, comparing it to what he himself called “cruel play”(Sutton-Smith 1997), and children’s play behaviors that he described variously as illicit, disorderly, grotesque, subversive, and “intentionally contrary”(Sutton-Smith 2008, 93). He offers examples of this  \n158  \nAmerican Journal of Play, volume 15, number 2 © 2023 by The Strong Contact Sandra Chang-Kredl at [sandra.chang-kredl@concordia.ca](sandra.chang-kredl@concordia.ca)  \nform of play in his research on the stories preschool and school-aged children make up: “and then I was dead”(94),“the poop splatted”(95),“once there was two babies and they hung from the ceiling naked”(95) . As with Schechner’s theatrical dark play, these young children’s representations “would strike their parents or their teachers as offensive”(96) . Yet, for Sutton-Smith, such forms of play carry a similar function as Schechner’s performances in increasing the player’s feelings of control and empowerment, as well as providing the child with a private transcendence over the ordinary, hegemonic adult world through a “kind of courageous parody”(96) .  \nJayne Osgood, Mona Sakr, and Victoria de Rijke edited a special edition of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood titled “Dark Play in Digital Landscapes”(2017) to address the experience of dark play in young children. Although the authors and contributors did not refer to Schechner’s original use of the term, they expanded on Sutton-Smith’s views of the darker sides of play to include digital as well as nondigital spaces (Osgood, Sakr, and de Rijke 2017, 109) . The special issue contributors characterized children’s dark play as revolving around children’s interests in the frightening,“the spooky, and the dangerous”(Roselló 2017, 145). They wrote that children “often seek out risk and feelings of exhilaration in their play”(Procter and Hackett 2017, 214), and that dark play supports the uniquely thrilling synergy experienced between fear and fun—“The fun is in almost being caught, in nearly dying”(Roselló 2017, 154). Corroborating SuttonSmith’s work, these contributors noted that children’s dark pretend scenarios ca","cbCaidjkCSdsUU7b","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidjkCSdsUU7b","pdf",205513,21,"English","# Dark play and dyadic constructions\n## Method and study setting\n## Fear, darkness, and symbolic play\n## Binary oppositions: self vs. other\n## Cultural and media narratives\n## Theoretical foundations and prior scholarship","[{\"question\":\"What is the central focus of the study?\",\"answer\":\"The study explores children’s symbolic play involving themes of fear and darkness, emphasizing binary oppositions—especially self versus other—and the dyadic scenarios children enact.\"},{\"question\":\"How was the research conducted?\",\"answer\":\"It is based on a year-long qualitative study with seven children aged four to ten, observing play with toys and dolls both at home and in virtual settings such as Roblox.\"},{\"question\":\"Which ideas from earlier scholars are used to frame the concept of dark play?\",\"answer\":\"The authors draw on Brian Sutton-Smith’s discussion of darker forms of play and Richard Schechner’s notion of “dark play” as performance that engages taboo themes, violence, and disturbing aspects of human nature.\"},{\"question\":\"Why do the authors argue dark play matters for young children?\",\"answer\":\"They argue dark play supports children’s feelings of control and empowerment and enables private transcendence over ordinary adult-world norms, while also providing safe imaginative focus for anxiety and fear.\"}]","Dark Play and Children’s Dyadic Constructions of Self and Other | PDF",1792073519,53]