HomeThe Child Stage Performer (18th-beginning 19th century)

The Child Stage Performer (18th-beginning 19th century)

L’enfant artiste de scène (XVIIIe-début XIXe s.)

Journal “European Drama and Performance Studies”

Revue « European Drama and Performance Studies »

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Published on Thursday, January 18, 2024

Abstract

This issue of European Drama and Performance Studies will look at the conditions under which child stage performers operate, in the light of recent research on “working childhood”, on the social history of performers, and on stages and performances that have long been in the shadows (curiosity shows, fairground shows, cultural activities outside European capitals). The aim will be to bring together case studies and also to offer summaries on this theme, with an emphasis on analyses of the 18th century and the early 19th century.

Announcement

Argument

Since the pioneering study by Philippe Ariès published in 1960, interest in the history of childhood in the modern era has generated numerous works that it would be impossible to list exhaustively here. Childhood studies have clearly shown how, through the works of Locke and then Rousseau, the social construction of childhood has been carried out around the growing interest in education the child as an adult in the making). Theatre had a special place in the pedagogical thinking of the Enlightenment, as illustrated by educational theatre, which was confined to the private sphere (Plagnol-Diéval, 1997 ; 2022), or college theatre (Piéjus, 2007 ; Brücker, 2023). The child/adolescent is a learner who plays in the show or attends it for his development. In the second half of the 18th century, several projects for professional schools - declamation, dance - emerged in Europe (Marie, 2019 ; Delattre, 2016). Prior to and alongside these educational experiments, many European stages had long been welcoming child dancers, actors, acrobats or musicians to entertain adult audiences : We need only to mention the boy players of the Elizabethan period (Lamb, 2009), the prodigies that Europe loved in the eighteenth century (Cowgil, 2016 ; Mueller, 2021 ; Traversier, 2021), the children’s troupes that performed dances and pantomimes in Northern and Eastern Europe (Dieke, 1934 ; Tar, 2012 ; Van Aelbrouck, 1994 ; 2022), the children employed at the Opera, rope dancers and acrobats at fairs, and so on. This phenomenon of the child performing artist was also crystallised by the creation of children’s theatres in France from the 1760s in parallel with travelling children’s troupes (Hemmings, 1987 ; Beaucé, 2022 ; Plagnol, 2005). These troupes, whether sedentary or nomadic, were an opportunity for entrepreneurs to enter the rapidly expanding entertainment market by circumventing bans and cutting costs. They became very popular at the height of the “theatromanie” in the 18th century and proliferated during the French Revolution, sometimes taking the name of drama school (and sometimes accepting no children) when theatrical privileges and monopolies were lifted. This phenomenon also contributed to the “dramatocracy” of the early nineteenth century (Yon, 2012), as illustrated by the Théâtre Comte (1820).

Interest in childhood and the stage is not new, as the above-mentioned studies attest, as do the two issues of the journal Cahiers Robinson devoted to the subject at the beginning of the 21st century (“L’enfant des tréteaux” ed. Francis Marcouin in 2000 and “Troupe et jeunesse” ed. Christine Page in 2005). The aim of the present issue is to reopen this field of the history of the performing arts by uncovering the conditions of activity of child performers in the light, in particular, of recent research on “working childhood” (AHRF 2023/3, ed. Caroline Fayolle and Côme Simien), on the social history of performers, and on stages and performances that have long been in the shadows (curiosity shows, fairground shows, cultural activities outside European capitals). The aim will be to bring together case studies and also to offer summaries on this theme, with an emphasis on analyses of the 18th century and the early 19th century.

Topics

Here are a few non-exhaustive ideas :

  • Working conditions for child artists : contracts, wages, training, apprenticeships.
  • Socio-professional and family trajectories ; movement of child performers.
  • What type of performance (pantomime, spoken theatre, rope dance, lyrical theatre, feats of strength and balance, various acts in curiosity shows, participation in ballets), what dramaturgies ? What effects ?
  • The real or supposed skills and weaknesses of child artists (flexibility, “innocence”, technicality, docility, weak voice, genius, etc.).
  • Reception of the phenomenon : apology (often linked to issues of education, renewal of the theatrical model, training, escape from social misery, etc.) ; criticism, polemic and/or prohibition (moral issues).
  • Questions of gender and domination (girl/boy ; adult/child ; abuse ; dramaturgical use of these issues).
  • The professions that surround the child artist (company director ; teacher ; person in charge of the children and/or their training/rehearsal).
  • Children and space : architecture of children’s theatres ; props, costumes ; body space.
  • Iconography of the child performer (following on from the work of Nuria Aragonès and Jennifer Milam).

Submission guidelines

Please submit your abstracts to Pauline Beaucé (pauline.beauce@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr)

no later than the first of March 2024.

  • Abstracts should be approximately 500 words in length and should be accompanied by a brief biographical note of 50 words.
  • Notification of acceptance will be sent on March 11 2024.
  • The deadline for the submission of 6,000 to 8,000-word articles is 10 september 2024. I welcome any inquiries or requests for further information.

References

  • Nuria Aragonès Riu, « Des enfants dans les troupes du Théâtre de la Foire au XVIIIe siècle », Cahiers Robinson, n° 18, 2005, p. 21-31.
  • Pauline Beaucé, « Les dispositifs ludiques dans les théâtres d’enfants à la fin du XVIIIe siècle : le cas du théâtre des Beaujolais au Palais Royal », Revue roumaine d’études francophones, n° 13 « Jeu(x) et spectacle(s) », 2022.
  • Nicolas Brücker (dir.), Le théâtre de collège au XVIIIe siècle, Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2023.
  • Serge Chassagne, « Le travail des enfants aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles », dans Histoire de l’enfance en Occident, Egli Becchi et Dominique Julia (dir.), Paris, Seuil, 1998, p. 224‑272.
  • Rachel Cowgil, « Proof of Genius : WA Mozart and the Construction of Musical Prodigies in Early Georgian London », dans McPherson (dir.), Musical Prodigies, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 511-549.
  • Aparna Gollapudi, « Recovering Miss Rose : Acting as a Girl on the Eighteenth-Century Stage », Theatre Survey, Volume 60 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , p. 6 – 34.
  • Emmanuelle Delattre Destemberg, Les enfants de Terpsichore: histoire de l’École et des élèves de la danse de l’Académie de musique (1783-1913), thèse de doctorat en histoire contemporaine, Université de Versailles St Quentin en Yvelines, 2016.
  • Gertraude Dieke, Die Blütezeit des Kindertheaters, Emsdetten, Lechte, 1934.
  • Caroline Fayolle et Côme Simien (dir.), « L’enfance laborieuse, envers de la modernité », Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 2023/3 (n° 413), p. 3-18.
  • Pascale Garnier, Ce dont les enfants sont capables: marcher, travailler, nager, XVIIIe, XIXe, XXe siècles, Paris, Métailié, 1995.
  • W. J. Hemmings, « Child Actors on the Paris Stage in the Eighteeth and Nineteenth Centuries », Theatre Research International, 12/1, 1987, p. 9-22.
  • Jeanne Klein, « Reclaiming Four Child Actors through Seven Plays in US Theatre, 1794-1800 » The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Volume 30, Number 1 (Fall 2017)
  • Edel Lamb, Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre, New York, Palgrave, 2009.
  • Laurence Marie, Inventer l’acteur. Emotions et spectacle dans l’Europe des Lumières, Paris, Sorbonne Université Presses, 2019
  • Jennifer Milam, « The Art of Imagining Childhood in the Eighteenth Century», dans Stories For Children, Histories of Childhood. Volume II : Literature [en ligne]. Tours : Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2007 (généré le 30 novembre 2023).
  • Adeline Mueller, Mozart and the Mediation of Childhood, University of Chicago Press, 2021.
  • Anne Piéjus (dir.), Plaire et instruire: le spectacle dans les collèges de l’Ancien Régime, Rennes, PUR, 2007.
  • Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval, Madame de Genlis et le théâtre d’éducation au XVIIIe siècle, Oxford, SVEC, 1997.
    • L’Enfant rêvé. Anthologie des théâtres d’éducation du XVIIIe siècle, Classiques Garnier, 2022.
    • « Enfants, troupes d’enfants et répertoires au XVIIIe siècle », dans Cahiers Robinson, n° 18, 2005, p. 5-20.
  • Bertrand Porot, « Les “jeux“ des foires au XVIIIe siècle : les spectacles d’acrobates », dans Roberto Illiano (dir.), Performing Arts and Technical Isues, Turnhout, Brépols 2021, p. 17-57.
  • Suzanne Rochefort, Vies théâtrales. Le métier de comédien à Paris entre Lumières et Révolution, Champs Vallon, fév. 2024.
  • Jennifer L. Sovde, « An Evening at the Théâtre Comte », Journal of the Western Society of French History, 2014-42, p. 88-101.
  • Gabriella-Nora Tar, Deutschsprachiges Kindertheater in Ungarn im 18. Jahrhundert, Münster, LIT Verlag, 2012.
  • Mélanie Traversier, L’Harmonica de verre et miss Davies: Essai sur la mécanique du succès au siècle des Lumières, Paris, Fayard, 2021.
  • Philippe Van Aelbrouck, Dictionnaire des danseurs, éditions Mardaga, 1994 ;
    • Les comédiens itinérants à Bruxelles au XVIIIe siècle, Editions de l’université de Bruxelles, 2022.

Date(s)

  • Friday, March 01, 2024

Keywords

  • enfant artiste, histoire du théâtre, spectacle, XVIIIe siècle, histoire sociale, pratique artistique

Information source

  • Pauline Beaucé
    courriel : pauline [dot] beauce [at] u-bordeaux-montaigne [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« The Child Stage Performer (18th-beginning 19th century) », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, January 18, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/vmdz

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