Synopses & Reviews
Children have been exploited as performers and wooed energetically as consumers throughout history. These thrusts have brought managers and parents into conflict with legislators who have attempted to control such exploitation, often the result of preconceived ideas about the role of children and childhood in their cultural contexts. Entertaining Children offers scholarly investigations into the employment and participation of children in the entertainment industry with examples drawn from historical and contemporary contexts. In addition to British and North American perspectives, the contributors encompass practices in Australasia, Italy, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, and mainland China, spanning from the eighteenth century to the interwar years and contemporary twenty-first century practices.
Synopsis
Children have been exploited as performers and wooed energetically as consumers throughout history. These essays offer scholarly investigations into the employment and participation of children in the entertainment industry with examples drawn from historical and contemporary contexts.
About the Author
Gillian Arrighi is Senior Lecturer in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research on circus and on young people in the entertainment industry has been published widely in international journals and in edited collections. She is Associate Editor of the e-journal,
Popular Entertainment Studies.
Victor Emeljanow is Emeritus Professor in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and General Editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. He has published widely on subjects ranging from the reception of Chekhov in Britain and the career of Theodore Kommisarjevsky to Victorian popular dramatists. He co-wrote the award-winning Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840-1880 (2001, with Jim Davis) and Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the series "Lives of Shakespearian Actors" (2012).
Table of Contents
PART I: TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT
Introduction: 'Setting the Scene': An Introduction; Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow
1. Musical Education and the Job Market: The Employment of Children and Young People in the Neapolitan Music Industry with Particular Reference to the Period 1650 to 1806; Rossella Del Prete
2. An American Antebellum Child-Actor Contract: Alfred Stewart and the Shift from Craft Apprentice to Wage Laborer; Shauna Vey
3. Children and Youth of the Empire: Tales of Transgression and Accommodation; Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow
4. British Child Performers 1920-1940: New Issues, Old Legacies; Dyan Colclough
PART II: BY CHILDREN/FOR CHILDREN
5. 'How Much Do You Love Me'? The Child's Obligations to the Adult in 1930s Hollywood; Noel Brown
6. Shifting Screens: The Child Performer and her Audience Revisited in the Digital Age; Gilli Bush-Bailey
7. The Business of Children in Disney's Theatre; Ken Cerniglia and Lisa Mitchell
8. Young Mammals: The Politics and Aesthetics of Long-Term Collaboration with Children in Mammalian Diving Reflex's The Torontonians; Broderick D.V. Chow and Darren O'DonnellPART III: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
9. The 'Little Legong Dancers' of Bali: Child Stars in Indonesian Dance Theatre; Laura Noszlopy
10. Child Training and Employment in Taiwanese Opera 1940s - 1960s: An Overview; Shih-Ching H. Picucci
11. Higher Wages, Less Pain: The Changing Role of Children in Traditional Chinese Theater; Mark Branner
12. Defying Death: Children in the Indian Circus; Jamie Skidmore