On a global platform we are witnessing the increased visibility of the people we call children and teenagers as political activists.
Meanwhile, across the contemporary performance landscape, children are participating as performers and collaborators in ways that resonate with this figure of the child activist. Beyond Innocence: Children in Performance proposes that performance has the ability to offer alternatives to hegemonic perceptions of the child as innocent, in need of protection, and apolitical. Through an in-depth analysis of selected performances shown in the UK within the past decade, alongside newly gathered documentation on children's participation in professional performance in their own words, this book considers how performance might offer more capacious representations of and encounters with children beyond the nostalgic and protective adult gaze elicited within mainstream contexts. Motivated by recent collaborations with children on stage that reimagine the figure of the child, the book offers a new approach to both reading age in performance and also doing research with children rather than on or about them. By redressing the current imbalance between the way that we read children and adults' bodies in performance and taking seriously children's cultures and experiences, Beyond Innocence asks what strategies contemporary performance has to offer both children and adults in order to foster shared spaces for social and political change. As such, the book develops an approach to analysing performance that not only recognises children as makers of meaning but also as historically, politically, and culturally situated subjects and bodies with lived experiences that far exceed the familiar narratives of innocence and inexperience that children often have to bear.
| ISBN: | 9781032848488 |
| Publication date: | 22nd May 2026 |
| Author: | Adele Senior |
| Publisher: | Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 212 pages |
| Series: | Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies |
| Genres: |
Theatre studies Research methods: general Cultural and media studies |
On a global platform we are witnessing the increased visibility of the people we call children and teenagers as political activists.
Meanwhile, across the contemporary performance landscape, children are participating as performers and collaborators in ways that resonate with this figure of the child activist. Beyond Innocence: Children in Performance proposes that performance has the ability to offer alternatives to hegemonic perceptions of the child as innocent, in need of protection, and apolitical. Through an in-depth analysis of selected performances shown in the UK within the past decade, alongside newly gathered documentation on children's participation in professional performance in their own words, this book considers how performance might offer more capacious representations of and encounters with children beyond the nostalgic and protective adult gaze elicited within mainstream contexts. Motivated by recent collaborations with children on stage that reimagine the figure of the child, the book offers a new approach to both reading age in performance and also doing research with children rather than on or about them. By redressing the current imbalance between the way that we read children and adults' bodies in performance and taking seriously children's cultures and experiences, Beyond Innocence asks what strategies contemporary performance has to offer both children and adults in order to foster shared spaces for social and political change. As such, the book develops an approach to analysing performance that not only recognises children as makers of meaning but also as historically, politically, and culturally situated subjects and bodies with lived experiences that far exceed the familiar narratives of innocence and inexperience that children often have to bear.
Beyond Innocence features in the following genres: Ethics and moral philosophy, Creative therapy / Expressive therapies, Performance art, Acting techniques, Gender studies, gender groups, Sociology, Child, developmental and lifespan psychology, Dance, Politics and government
Beyond Innocence is available in Paperback, Hardback
Beyond Innocence was written by Adele Senior and published by Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis
Beyond Innocence has 212 pages
Yes it is part of Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies series
£43.19