A Comparison of Characteristics of Intellectually Gifted and Non-Intellectually Gifted Adolescents and Young Adults Participating in Theatre Arts Programs

Abstract

Since 1960, researchers and theoreticians have devoted a great deal of attention to the concept of creativity. They have developed profiles describing the characteristics of highly creative persons and proposed many programs intended to enhance creative expression. They have, however, neither examined nor discussed the characteristics of individuals who are both highly creative and intellectually gifted, and they have not often provided precise descriptions of those qualities as they are manifested in specific fields. This paper is a comparison of the characteristics of highly creative, intellectually gifted and highly creative, non-intellectually gifted adolescents and young adults who have participated actively in theatre arts programs at the secondary and undergraduate levels. Placement of students in the two categories examined was based on scores on individual or group IQ tests and on the author's subjective evaluation, after an extensive period of observation, of the students' levels of creativity. The paper is not a research study; rather, it is based on the author's observations during more than 15 years of work in secondary and undergraduate theatre. The sample included about 25 highly creative, intellectually gifted students and nearly 100 highly creative students who were not intellectually gifted. Although this paper is limited to theatre arts, the observed differences between these two groups of students may emphasize the importance of further examining theatre and other fields of expression to determine whether similar differences exist.