Playing for Change: The Performative Functions of Children’s Piano Play
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Abstract
In an iconic scene from the 1988 film, Big, actors Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia leap from key to key on an enlarged foot-operated electronic keyboard as they perform in duet two piano pieces: “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul.” For Hanks, playing the role of a 12-year-old boy magically transformed into a 30-yearold adult after wishing “to be big,” the performance represents an outward manifestation of the inner-turmoil brought on by pre-pubescent size- and ageanxiety. As a child suddenly trapped within an adult’s body, this form of play, I call “piano play,” also represents a brief moment of liberation wherein for the first time in the film, Hanks appears comfortable negotiating the complexities of the incompatible worlds that he is trapped in, and yet, torn between: the world of childhood, characterized by carefree innocence and play; and the world of adulthood, characterized by work and responsibility.
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