Research team
Expertise
Research of climate change fiction and climate change theatre, Anthropocene fiction and Anthropocene theatre. Research of contemporary theatre for young audiences.
Acting Like a Child? How do Professional Adult Theatre Makers Embody Children On Stage?
Abstract
Drawing on insights from childhood studies and age studies, interviews with theatre makers and children, as well as on my practical knowledge as a professional director of theatre for young audiences (TYA), this project analyses how adult theatre makers give shape to and embody child characters in contemporary British, Flemish, and Dutch TYA. The construction of the image of the child in art exposes underlying ideological and cultural assumptions about childhood. Literary scholars have extensively discussed the construction of the child on the page, or the so-called Literary Child, but so far there is a noticeable lack of scholarship on its sibling – which I propose to call the Stage Child – in both theatre studies and literary studies. The intergenerational representation of adults performing children creates an inherent tension. Since childhood only has meaning in relationship to adulthood, it is thus particularly relevant to scrutinize the construction of childhood in this medium. The main aims are to determine the representational strategies used by adults to embody staged children, and to lay bare how (cultural) differences in conceptions of childhood impact the staging and perception of child characters. Paying attention to the Stage Child will provide significant new insights on the construction of childhood in art, because the embodied nature of theatre offers different possibilities to reflect on or even criticize the delineation between adulthood and childhood.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
- Fellow: Mertens Mahlu
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project