Summarizes a comprehensive study isolating long- and short-term recollections of young audiences in regard to characters, themes, scenography, objects, and sound effects of 26 theater productions over a 17-year period. Finds that, in general, young audiences recall more strongly those theatrical elements further removed from reality. (SR)

Asserts that there is a need for more empirical research in the area of theatre for young audiences. Discusses myths about empirical research. (MS)

Discusses children's questions about theater (gathered by the author over a 10-year span). Poses more questions and challenges about the responsibilities of children's theater artists and educators. (SR)

Traces the development of the Association Internationale du Theatre pour l'Enfance et de la Jeunesse (ASSITEJ), the international association of theaters for children and youth, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1990. (SR)

Presents a 54-page index to the journal "Children's Theatre Review," covering the years 1976-86. (SR)

Reports on a study which interviewed children (fourth, fifth, and sixth graders) on the following issues: who should play child protagonists in children's theatre (adults or children); which actor in a particular production was most believable and realistic; and casting advice for directors of children's theatre. (SR)

Looks at the differing production choices and dramatic methods endorsed by two settlement workers, Alice Minnie Hets and Lillian Wald, as witnessed in the opening productions of their settlement houses, where the dramatic arts were among the tools used by social workers to help fledging citizens adopt American ways. (SR)

Describes 45 third graders'"dramatic literacy" and the modal sources for inferences. Finds that (1) the more children used visual cues, the more they used verbal and psychological cues; and (2) inferences about the play's theme were related to aural recall of thematic dialogue and what children reported learning from the play. (SR)

Examines the social construction of "childhood" and of "children" within two important theoretical texts published in the 1950s: Isabel Burger's "Creative Play Acting: Learning through Drama" and Charlotte Chorpenning's "Twenty-One Years with Children's Theatre." Finds several interrelated constructs,…

Examines, through interviews with two prominent Israeli theatre teachers, the status of children's theatre in Israel at the present, and notes the problems with the types of children's theatre being produced, including the fact that children's plays are too didactic, and that there is little funding to produce them. (JC)

Argues that artists, educators, and researchers who love theater, children, and theater for children can help to secure a prominent place for theater and the other arts in the futures of children by engaging in arts-based educational research that is story-based, compelling, persuasive, and artful and that aims at a wide audience of fellow…

Examines the invisible incorporation of constructions from the Victorian and Progressive eras regarding children, women, and theatre art, into the field of child drama. Discusses child drama as a moral calling; women and the gendered status of child drama; child drama as an amateur field; child drama as education in democracy; and the construction…

Applies feminist dramatic criticism to the texts of 18 plays produced in the 1994-1995 season by three preeminent Theatre for Young Audiences companies. Finds a high proportion of characters who do not display typical gender-role stereotyping, but finds that most female characters are objects of adult exchange who rarely have power. Discusses four…

Examines C. Chorpenning's 1940 children's play and compares it with S. Zeder's 1983 children's play. Reveals how the plays are deeply embedded in dominant cultural attitudes of their time and in historically situated models of female adolescence and yet are resistant to these same narratives. Discusses how they have contributed, positively and…

Uses semantic differential to assess specific and global attitudes of children toward the theater experience. Shows that the semantic differential can be used with fifth grade children. (SR)