Staging Issues

This chapter examines the arguments for the use of child actors on the fifth-century Athenian stage, and concludes that textual evidence indicates that children were indeed used in the original productions. The embodied identity of children is central to their role in drama, as the identities of ‘child actor’ and ‘child character’ are more closely aligned than the identities of adult actor/character. Once the presence of children onstage is established, the chapter proceeds to evaluate questions such as the use of masks and the use of dolls. The use of child speech and song is discussed in relation to socio-historical contexts, concluding that children have more of a prominent role than we would expect.

Aesthetics · Art · Character (mathematics) · Developmental psychology · Drama · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Identity (music) · Literature · Relation (database) · Sociology · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Psychology