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It traces how his early experiences shaped a focus on playful play, from childhood games and humor to later work in theater, improvisation, and teaching. The conversation addresses playful meditation, the roots of playfulness, the power of shared imagination, and key distinctions between schooling and learning. It also discusses play deprivation and the restorative value of noncompetitive games, including DeKoven’s school-based Interplay Curriculum and the Games Preserve retreat.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/deep-fun-and-the-theater-of-games-an-interview-with-bernie-dekoven/591481/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/deep-fun-and-the-theater-of-games-an-interview-with-bernie-dekoven/591481.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"supergirl","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":14},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How did Bernie DeKoven’s childhood influence his focus on playfulness?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"He describes early experiences with his father’s games and wordplay, plus the impact of rough-and-tumble play that felt unsatisfying. Developing humor helped him find the roots of playfulness.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What themes does DeKoven say consistently shape his adulthood play?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"He cites theater, poetry, and making up games as enduring themes, along with improvisational practice and teaching experiences.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What was the purpose and key content of the Interplay Curriculum in Philadelphia schools?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"DeKoven explains that in 1968 he was tasked with creating a theater curriculum for elementary students, beginning with theater games and exercises and expanding through research, including work based on Viola Spolin’s improvisation methods.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},591481,1792660469,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":14,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},962088121634,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","Deep Fun and the Theater of Games  \nAn Interview with Bernie DeKoven  \nBernie DeKoven is both a play theorist and a play practitioner. He is the author of The Well-Played Game (reissued in 2013 by MIT Press) as well as Junkyard Sports, Power Meetings, and Connected Executives and of the compact disc Recess for the Soul, an assemblage of monologues about playful meditation. A Playful Path, his most recent work, is a collection of essays from his popular blog deepFUN. In 2014 he teamed with the improv organization ComedySportz Indianapolis to stage his interactive show Play’s the Thing. DeKoven developed the interplay curriculum for Philadelphia’s public schools, and he has devised electronic games for toy and games manufacturers such as Ideal Toy Company, Children’s Television Workshop, Mattel Inc., and CBS software. This earned him an Ifil-Raynolds Award from the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. In 1971 De Koven founded The Games Preserve, a retreat center in Eastern Pennsylvania dedicated to the exploration of games and play. In this interview, De Koven talks about the virtues of playful play and discusses the roots of playfulness, the power of shared imagination, the joys of performing, the difference between schooling and learning, the perils of play deprivation, and the gentle, comic, restorative mischief of noncompetitive games. Key words: game design; improvisation; playful play, teaching games; The Games Preserve  \nAmerican Journal of Play: Did your childhood experiences lead you to an interest in play?  \nBerne DeKoven: They must have. It is difficult to determine what impact my parents had. My father played games with me when I was young. He loved chess and bridge and had many books and studied chess passionately. He also played word games with me and invented his own variation on a spelling game. He was very competitive, though. And that also must have impacted my particular focus on playfulness. When it came to rough-andtumble play with my peers, I could do the tumble part, but the rough part proved deeply unsatisfying to my inner being. This is when I began to  \n137  \nAmerican Journal of Play, volume 7, number 2 © The Strong  \n[Contact Bernie DeKoven at bernie.dekoven@gmail.com](Contact Bernie DeKoven at bernie.dekoven@gmail.com)  \ndevelop my sense of humor in which, of course, can be found the roots of playfulness. We also moved around a lot, and I think this contributed to the promotion of my wittiness, and all those playful-like skills that contributed to my ability to make (and sadly leave) friends.  \nAJP: Who have been your best playmates?  \nDeKoven: My best playmates didn’t come along until I met my wife and had my children. I had some good playmates before, though, and I remember having the most fun with them making up adventures in vacant lots. There were kids who liked to play board games with me and some great action games. (I had a game of electric football that I really loved, because you could twiddle forever with the two metal tabs that somehow determined how fast and in what direction each player would move) . But the best of my playmates were those with whom I could share and build fantasies. I grew to boyhood shortly after World War II ended, and I found myself having the most fun with people I could shoot and who would not only acknowledge that they were dead but could also die with dramatic vividness. Pretend dying is fantastic fun.  \nAJP: What are some of the ways you played when you reached adulthood? DeKoven: Theater, poetry, and making up games are my life’s consistent themes.  \nMy meandering and sometimes muddy career path began with writing poetry and acting in plays at my high school, Omaha Central, where I also wrote an often silly humor column for the school paper. After taking a few theater courses at Temple University, I fell in love with improvisational theater though I preferred improvising without an audience. After travelling to Israel, where I met the woman I married","cbCaigHD8mOkBDv7","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigHD8mOkBDv7","pdf",172244,18,"English","# American Journal of Play: Did your childhood experiences lead you to an interest in play?\n# AJP: Who have been your best playmates?\n# AJP: What are some of the ways you played when you reached adulthood?\n# AJP: How did you come to develop the Interplay Curriculum for schools in Philadelphia, and what were its chief components?\n# AJP: How did it go?","[{\"question\":\"How did Bernie DeKoven’s childhood influence his focus on playfulness?\",\"answer\":\"He describes early experiences with his father’s games and wordplay, plus the impact of rough-and-tumble play that felt unsatisfying. Developing humor helped him find the roots of playfulness.\"},{\"question\":\"What themes does DeKoven say consistently shape his adulthood play?\",\"answer\":\"He cites theater, poetry, and making up games as enduring themes, along with improvisational practice and teaching experiences.\"},{\"question\":\"What was the purpose and key content of the Interplay Curriculum in Philadelphia schools?\",\"answer\":\"DeKoven explains that in 1968 he was tasked with creating a theater curriculum for elementary students, beginning with theater games and exercises and expanding through research, including work based on Viola Spolin’s improvisation methods.\"}]","Deep Fun and the Theater of Games - An Interview with Bernie DeKoven | PDF",1792072572,28]