Entertaining Children: The Participation of Youth in the Entertainment Industry (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)

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. 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 Front Matter....Pages i-ix Setting the Scene: An Introduction....Pages 1-11 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 Musical Education and the Job Market: The Employment of Children and Young People in the Neapolitan Music Industry with Particular Reference to the Period 1650–1806....Pages 15-32 An American Antebellum Child-Actor Contract: Alfred Stewart and the Shift from Craft Apprentice to Wage Laborer....Pages 33-50 Children and Youth of the Empire: Tales of Transgression and Accommodation....Pages 51-71 British Child Performers 1920–40: New Issues, Old Legacies....Pages 73-90 Front Matter....Pages 91-91 “How much do you love me?” The Child’s Obligations to the Adult in 1930s Hollywood....Pages 93-110 Shifting Screens: The Child Performer and Her Audience Revisited in the Digital Age....Pages 111-127 The Business of Children in Disney’s Theater....Pages 129-145 Young Mammals: The Politics and Aesthetics of Long-Term Collaboration with Children in Mammalian Diving Reflex’s The Torontonians....Pages 147-164 Front Matter....Pages 165-165 The “little legong dancers” of Bali: The Rise of a Child Star in Indonesian Dance Theater....Pages 167-184 Child Training and Employment in Taiwanese Opera 1940s–1960s: An Overview....Pages 185-200 Higher Wages, Less Pain: The Changing Role of Children in Traditional Chinese Theater....Pages 201-218 Defying Death: Children in the Indian Circus....Pages 219-233 Back Matter....Pages 235-251 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. This text 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 practice