Overview

Revealing the careers and backstage lives of child performers and their place in antebellum America From 1855 until 1863, the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Comedians, a professional acting company of approximately thirty children, entertained audiences with their nuanced performances of adult roles on stages around the globe. In Childhood and NineteenthCentury American Theatre: The Work of the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors, author Shauna Vey provides an insightful account not only of this unique antebellum stage troupe but also of contemporary theatre practices and the larger American culture, including shifts in the definition of childhood itself.Both a microhistory of a professional theatre company and its juvenile players in the decade before the Civil War and a larger narrative of cultural change in the United States, Childhood and NineteenthCentury American Theatre sheds light on how childhood was idealized both on and off the stage, how the role of the child in society shifted in the nineteenth century, and the ways economic value and sentiment contributed to how children were viewed.

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9780809334384

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Reviews

Saved from the dustbin of history and brought center stage from a mere footnote, the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors, unique in the history of juvenile performers during the transitional antebellum period, are given the due they much deserve in Shauna Vey s superb study. Based on extensive research, Vey places the Marshes and their troupe in the context of theatrical practices of the day, and relates her findings to the phenomenon of juvenile players both before this time frame and since. Don B. Wilmeth, coeditor of The Cambridge History of American Theatre It is a rare scholar who takes the time to thoroughly research the nearly invisible true world of children in the entertainment industry. Shauna Vey has written well and wisely, and I learned much that I did not know. Paul Petersen, actor on The Donna Reed Show and president emeritus of A Minor Consideration Set in an age when children worked but also when childhood was becoming the age of innocence, this record of child actors in mid-nineteenth-century America tells us much about both the history of the theatre and the transformation of youth, helping to make sense of the modern dilemma of child labor in the entertainment industry. This well-researched and delightfully written story should reach a wide audience. Gary Cross, Distinguished Professor of Modern History, Pennsylvania State University

Saved from the dustbin of history and brought center stage from a mere footnote, the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors, unique in the history of juvenile performers during the transitional antebellum period, are given the due they much deserve in Shauna Vey s superb study. After extensive research, Vey places the Marshes and their troupe in the context of theatrical practices of the day, and relates her findings to the phenomenon of juvenile players both before this time frame and since. Don B. Wilmeth, coeditor of The Cambridge History of American Theatre It is a rare scholar who takes the time to thoroughly research the nearly invisible true world of children in the entertainment industry. Shauna Vey has written well and wisely, and I learned much. Paul Petersen, actor on The Donna Reed Show and president emeritus of A Minor Consideration Set in an age when children worked but also when childhood was becoming the age of innocence, this record of child actors in mid-nineteenth-century America tells us much about both the history of the theatre and the transformation of youth, helping to make sense of the modern dilemma of child labor in the entertainment industry. This well-researched and delightfully written story should reach a wide audience. Gary Cross, Distinguished Professor of Modern History, Pennsylvania State University

Author Information

Shauna Vey is an associate professor at New York City College of Technology, City University of New York, where she teaches theater and communication courses. Her work has been published in Theatre History Studies and Theatre Survey.

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