Nursery Rhymes and Children’s Games in the Plays of Tina Howe
Tina Howe uses nursery rhymes and childrens games much as parents use them: to amuse and distract, while attending to and instructing in the nuance and cadence of language. When separated from the rhythm and rhyme, the words of the nursery rhymes in One Shoe Off (the title itself being from a nursery rhyme) and Prides Crossing depict fanciful and unnerving themes. Behind the rhythm and rhyme lie lifes oddities. By attending to Howes use of nursery rhymes and games in One Shoe Off and Prides Crossing, her audience must return to their earliest language acquisition to contemplate what they have taken for granted, while being jolted into realizing they had accepted the surreal early in their lives, and examine how Howes absurdist themes use those nursery rhymes as resonance for the study of language, its use in her plays, and in their own lives.
Howes use of childrens games in Birth and After Birth (musical chairs), Approaching Zanzibar (geography game), One Shoe Off (dress up and Concentration), Coastal Disturbances (shell game), Prides Crossing (dress up and croquet) serves a similar purpose. These games instruct children in how to play by prescribed rules. Ironically, even with rules someone must win and someone must lose. Howe, as with the nursery rhymes, uses her absurdist skills to demonstrate how these childhood games contribute to the delusion that there are prescribed rules for life.