
Beyond Innocence
Children in Performance
Adele Senior(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 22. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
212 pages
978-1-032-84848-8 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
General and Postgraduate
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
319 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-84848-8 (9781032848488)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
10/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€197.30
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
09/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€60.49
Available for download

E-Book
09/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€60.49
Available for download
Person
Adele Senior is a Reader in Theatre and Performance at Leeds Beckett University.
Content
Part 1 Performing Children 1. The Problem Child of Contemporary Performance Part 2 Reading Children 2. From Age Transvestism to Trans*-age Performance: On Children Playing Adults 3. The Child as Adult in Five Easy Pieces 4. The Female-Girl-Child-Teenager in The Hamilton Complex 5. From Gender to Age: A New Approach to Reading Age in Performance Part 3 Experiencing Children 6. Queer(ing) Methodologies 7. The Embodied Child of Blind Cinema 8. Growing Sideways Together: Zina Abaraonye and Sorrel Barnes on Men and Girls Dance and We Are Not Finished 9. The Child as Researcher and Archivist: Documenting News News News