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202 Socially Intelligent Agentshero/heroine, villain, donor, magician, loved one and family. In Teatrix,rolesdefine and establish the function of the agent (character) in the narrative, bymeans of the specification of particular actions and goals for that agent (e.g.,a villain character has as one of its goals harming the hero). With these welldefined sets of roles and actors, we aimed at providing the children with a setof varied characters who are interesting, identifiable and fun and at the sametime that have the means to develop and grow throughout the story creationprocess [8].Furthermore, the characters were developed in such a way that they can actautonomously in the story, if not controlled by a child. This is simplified bythe fact that the system must try to guarantee that the character follows the rolethat was assigned to it. This means that a role has associated a set of goals thatthe system will try to achieve (see [6] and [5] for a more detailed descriptionof the agent’s architecture).To control the characters Teatrix provides the children with a set of actionswhich they can select at acting time (see Figure 24.3). These actions are associatednot only with the character performing it but also with the props thatthe character owns at each instant (see Figure 24.3). In our research, we haveembedded inside the objects the necessary knowledge of what effect they willhave in the environment.Figure 24.3.Actions for controlling the charactersThis defined set of actions provides the children with motion control (forexample: each child can move her character along the scene by using the moveaction) and a type of behaviour control, achieved through assignment of a roleto the characters and with the use of the props.5. Communication and Reflection in TeatrixTaking into account the types of interactions observed in the dramatic gamesof the school, we tried to provide some mechanisms for communication embeddedin Teatrix. Basically, children can communicate through their charactersin two ways: 1) by using their objects on another character (for exampleone child may use her character’s stick on another character to harm it); or 2)by speaking to another character using the “talk” action.These two ways of communication were broadly used by children in theversion installed in the NIMIS classroom of the school “O Nosso Sonho”.