ABSTRACT
Teachers and parents like to think that they approve of children playing, that they believe children learn and develop through play, even in the old dictum that a child's play is its work. a rather complicated formula of Gregory Bateson's, playful actions are twice removed from reality in that they do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote if they were not playful actions. Play in the sense of action and representation twice removed from reality resides in the fact that it exists in a realm where it would be misguided and mistaken to evaluate it with respect to the kind of moral, political, commonsense or scientific criteria always relevantly applicable in everyday life. Understanding the nature of play is particularly important to drama in education, where children have been encouraged to continue their imaginative play as improvisation, both spontaneous and scripted.
