artist intention and audience reception in theatre for young audiences

This article was downloaded by: [McGill University Library]On: 19 November 2014, At: 12:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Youth Theatre JournalPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uytj20

Artist Intention and Audience Receptionin Theatre for Young AudiencesMatt Omasta aa Department of Theatre Arts , Utah State University , Logan, Utah,USAPublished online: 25 Apr 2011.

To cite this article: Matt Omasta (2011) Artist Intention and Audience Reception in Theatre for YoungAudiences, Youth Theatre Journal, 25:1, 32-50, DOI: 10.1080/08929092.2011.569530

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2011.569530

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uytj20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/08929092.2011.569530

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2011.569530

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Youth Theatre Journal, 25:32–50, 2011Copyright © American Alliance for Theatre and EducationISSN: 0892-9092 print / 1948-4798 onlineDOI: 10.1080/08929092.2011.569530

Artist Intention and Audience Reception in Theatrefor Young Audiences

MATT OMASTA

Department of Theatre Arts, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA

This article discusses the relationship between the intentions of adult artists who cre-ate works of theatre for young audiences and the responses of young people who viewthose performances. It reviews the results of a mixed-methods case study conductedwith middle school students who viewed a production of Y. York’s Getting Near toBaby. The young spectators sometimes responded to themes in the play the way thatthe artists envisioned they would; at other times, they did not; and in some instances,they responded to themes the artists did not envision at all. The data suggest little cor-relation between artists’ investment in conveying particular ideas and young audiencemembers’ responses to those ideas. Rather, the nature of the ideas and the ways inwhich they are presented seem more likely to influence audience response.

There is a great incentive for theatre artists working with young people to promote theidea that their work can shape young minds for the better. In this article, I investigate thisfundamental assumption and probe if, when, and how young people’s responses to a casestudy performance corresponded with adult artists’ intentions. It is not my goal to “prove”or “disprove” this assumption but rather to question it, subject it to empirical inquiry, anddevelop a more nuanced understanding of how it serves (or constitutes a disservice to) thefield.

Recent Research in TYA/TIE Reception

In recent years, artists and educators involved in theatre for young audiences (TYA),and especially theatre in education (TIE), have frequently maintained that theatre canteach young people specific content knowledge and ideologies, even through a singleperformance. Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) Artistic Director Peter Brosius exem-plified this argument in the title of his 2001 piece: “Can Theatre + Young People = SocialChange? The Answer Must Be Yes.” While Brosius’s claim illustrates his desire for thestatement to be true, the piece lacks empirical data supporting this claim. Brosius expli-cated the supposed messages embedded in CTC’s work but did not present evidence thatthose messages resulted in any changes to young spectators’ values. For example, in hisdiscussion of CTC’s production of A Village Fable, Brosius recalled: “Our audience toldus that in seeing ignorance, intolerance, and cruelty in this fable, they saw themselves.In response, the audience members promised that they would reach out to someone whohad been shunned in their school or neighborhood” (75). What Brosius does not state is

Address correspondence to Matt Omasta, Department of Theatre Arts, Utah State University,4025 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-4025. E-mail: [email protected]

32

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Artist Intention and Audience Reception in TYA 33

how such responses were elicited from the audience. It seems likely that if asked, “Didyou see ignorance, intolerance, and cruelty in this show?” or, “Does this show reflect yourworld?” audience members might reply in the affirmative, whether or not they would haveagreed unprompted. Also, did the “promise” reflect a spontaneous change in the specta-tors’ values? Or did they simply respond “yes” to the question, “Will you promise to reachout to others?” I do not know if such leading questions were asked, nor do I assume thatthey were. Without more information, though, “evidence” of this sort does not substantiatethe claim made in the article’s title: that social change “must” result from the collision oftheatre and young people.

Practitioners of TIE usually aim explicitly to teach or change students’ perspectivesand often prioritize assessment of student learning. Mirrione argued that one of the “keystarting positions” for TIE playwrights is “a fundamental desire to write about a pressingproblem that will bring about a change of consciousness in an audience” (1993, 74, empha-sis in original). Underlying any belief that theatre should change people, there necessarilyexists a belief that theatre can change people.

Additionally, TYA and TIE often aim to teach particular curricula; numerous stud-ies have been conducted to determine productions’ efficacy in this regard. For example,Harvey and Miles set out to determine if viewing a production of a Holocaust play andreading an associated study guide increased students’ knowledge of the Holocaust and the“empathic concern” more generally (2009, 91).

Furthermore, several TYA scholars note that even when artists do not overtly intend toinstill particular ideologies in their audiences, they might. Van de Water argues that TYAis a form of “cultural production,” which “produc[es] meanings in specific contexts, forspecific audiences, through specific performances” (2009, 15). Chappell warns that “whilewatching plays, children enter the liminal space of communitas and are changed by theexperience in ways subtle or profound” (2010, 16). He argues, for example, that “controlenacted upon child characters may create an expectation for and acceptance of institutionaland relational control” (12).

But while many scholars and artists argue that TYA affects spectators’ knowledge,attitudes, values, and beliefs, others disagree. For example, Klein argues that “producers ofTYA tend to romanticize its social and moral ‘effects’ upon youth by believing passionatelythat viewing one remarkable performance has the potential (the operative word) to ‘cause’positive, social changes in children’s minds, hearts and behaviors” (2005, 41, emphasis inoriginal). Though Klein challenges these producers’ views, she does not provide empiricaldisconfirming evidence.

Grady did conduct an ethnographic study of a British TIE program to understand whatthe various parties took away from the experience. She concluded that artist intentions inTIE do not necessarily correspond to audience response, noting:

Students ‘get’ different things from our educational theatre efforts than wethink they do, or hope they might. As Janet Wolff suggests, they are cre-ative and situated ‘readers,’ perceivers, and interpreters of experience and theirmeanings reflect their personal preoccupations and experience of the world todate. (1995, 382)

Grady suggests that children’s perspectives are likely to diverge from what artists mayintend. However, because she considered an entire TIE program (complete with work-shops) as opposed to a single TYA production (in a theatre with no additional educationalcomponents), her findings are not necessarily applicable to more traditional TYA.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

34 M. Omasta

Wartemann (2009) discusses an instance in which a young, visually impaired girl liter-ally “took to the stage” during a TYA performance, following the actors and musicians andeven creating her own “music” by stomping her feet. While Wartemann encourages artists“to trust, to be brave, to give in just a little more” (14) in such cases, when children use aTYA production as a stepping stone to create their own performances (literally), it seemslikely that the adult artists’ intentions are subordinated beneath the wills of individualaudience members.

Methodology

This article draws data from a mixed-methods case study I conducted1 during the 2008–2009 academic year with middle school students who attended a production of Y. York’sGetting Near to Baby (GNTB; 2008), presented by Childsplay, a professional TYA com-pany in Tempe, Arizona. While that study focused broadly on how the production affectedspectators’ attitudes, values, and beliefs from a cognitive studies perspective, the focusof this essay is on the artists’ intentions and how they were and were not realized in theadolescent viewers’ responses.

Although my case study considered a relatively small (about 65) group of young peo-ple and a single production, I believe it can still help us understand the relationshipsbetween artist intentions and audience responses. The participants in my study were notrandomly selected, nor do they represent any population other than themselves, thus I donot necessarily claim that my findings are generalizable to any other group of people.I worked with a small and deliberately selected population that was not necessarily rep-resentative of any other group. It is important to note, though, that this is not atypical inmixed-methods research that includes a qualitative component (Greig, Taylor, and MacKay2007, 72).

The first phase of my investigation consisted of semistructured interviews with adultsinvolved in the artistic development of GNTB and Childsplay’s education department. Theparticipants included the show’s director Andrés Alcalá,2 playwright Y. York,3 and Directorof Education Patricia Snoyer Black.4 The primary purpose of these interviews was to deter-mine what attitudes, values, and beliefs the participants believed were embedded within theproduction and what effects (if any) they hoped and/or believed the production would haveon young people.

1The case study was a central component of my doctoral dissertation at Arizona State University(ASU; Omasta 2009). The study was approved by ASU’s Institutional Review Board.

2Andrés Alcalá has acted and directed with organizations including the Oregon ShakespeareFestival and Oregon Children’s Theatre. He directed GNTB during his two-year term as an artisticassociate at Childsplay on a Theatre Communications Group New Generations Program grant.

3Y. York has written more than twenty-five plays and performance pieces, taught playwritingat institutions including New York University (NYU) and ASU, and received honors such as theCharlotte B. Chorpenning Playwriting Award for a Distinguished Body of Work for young people.She adapted GNTB from the Newbery Honor Book by Audrey Couloumbis under commission by thePeople’s Light and Theatre where it premiered in 2008 following a workshop production at NYU in2006.

4Patricia Snoyer Black serves as director of artist residencies at Childsplay, where she previ-ously held the position of education director. At Childsplay, she was the project director for a ModelDevelopment and Dissemination in Arts in Education Grant from the U.S. Department of Education,part of which involved a partnership with Phoenix-area schools that saw productions of GNTB andexperienced related curricular activities in their classrooms.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


To assess students’ views, I invited them to respond to brief written surveys before andafter viewing the performance, which consisted of a series of statements they responded tousing four-point Likert scales. It is worth noting that although no control group of studentswho did not view the performance was used in this study, it was still possible to carryout quantitative research by conducting an “outcome evaluation” that was “based on theidea of ‘gain scores.”’ The participants were assessed “on a range of relevant factors”(values) “before they receive[d] the new treatment” (viewing the performance) “and [were]assess[ed] again afterwards” (Greig, Taylor, and MacKay 2007, 104).

Shortly after taking the postperformance survey, randomly selected students wereinvited to participate in focus group discussions,5 which were segregated by gender. Thesessions consisted of the focus group leader asking questions that specifically probedstudents’ attitudes, values, and beliefs regarding the performance and the ideas it addressed.

In analyzing the transcripts of both the artist interviews and the focus groups,I employed values coding as a heuristic to help me construct patterns in the data (Saldaña2009). Analyzing interviews helped me determine what themes the adults felt the playaddressed. When reviewing the focus group transcripts, coding revealed patterns andinsights into the young people’s experiences.

Play Synopsis

For readers unfamiliar with Y. York’s adaptation of GNTB, I offer here a brief synopsis.The play begins when sisters Willa Jo and Little Sister move in with their Aunt Patty andUncle Hob following the sudden death of their youngest sister, Baby, who lost her life bydrinking contaminated water. Little Sister believes (implausibly) that she is to blame forBaby’s death and that others might be harmed if she speaks out; she therefore refrains fromspeaking throughout the play.

Aunt Patty takes the girls from their home because their mother is despondent in hergrief over the loss of Baby, and Patty feels the girls’ home has become unlivable. Tensionquickly builds between the girls and Aunt Patty, who insists that the sisters behave as shedeems appropriate.

Aunt Patty’s social aspirations lead her to try to join an exclusive ladies’ club to whichLucy Wainwright belongs. Lucy teaches charm school and consistently exhibits an air ofpretension. She seeks money by offering to take Willa Jo and Little Sister on as students.Aunt Patty accepts the offer to win Lucy’s favor, despite feeling uneasy about the financialcommitment. Lucy’s daughter, Cynthia, performs pretentiousness similarly to her motherand frequently acts rudely to the sisters.

Meanwhile, Liz and Isaac Fingers, two amiable children from a lower-income familyliving across the street from Aunt Patty, befriend the sisters. Aunt Patty and Lucy hold the

5A potential shortcoming of the focus group approach was that participants may not have beenentirely open and honest about their experiences. On the one hand, Bogdan and Biklen noted that“a major problem with focus groups can be that individuals may not share important experiencesthey have had because they are too embarrassed to share them in the group” (2007, 109). This prob-lem could have been especially prevalent with peer-conscious middle school students (though itwas hopefully alleviated to a degree by the gender segregation of the groups). Furthermore, oncesome opinions are shared, “individual group members are, by and large, unwilling to diverge too farfrom the group consensus. On the whole, people are reluctant to contradict prevailing viewpoints”(Wilkinson and Birmingham 2003, 109). This was often the case in the focus groups I conducted,though sometimes it was possible to solicit alternative opinions.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

36 M. Omasta

Fingers family in low regard; Lucy even suggests that the children must have diseases fromliving in filth.

Throughout the play, Aunt Patty grows increasingly frustrated as Little Sister refusesto speak and Willa Jo becomes ever more obstinate. Little Sister continually tries to “getnear to Baby” in Heaven by climbing trees and eventually ends up with Willa Jo on theroof of the house, much to Aunt Patty’s chagrin.

About this time, Aunt Patty learns that Mr. Fingers intends to help her by plantinga hedge in her backyard. Patty visits the Fingers’ home and realizes it is very clean, andshe is deeply impressed by Mrs. Fingers’s hospitality. She realizes that she would ratherbe friends with people like the Fingers than the Wainwrights. Eventually, Uncle Hob, whoacts as an understanding mediator between all parties throughout the play, dismisses Lucyand joins the girls on the roof. Patty finally realizes that the family needs to stick togetherto get through their grief and ascends to the roof as well. Little Sister, finally in a safeplace of companionship, ends the play by speaking for the first time and explains that sheclimbed to the roof in order to “get near to Baby.”

Artists’ Beliefs About Theatre

The artists expressed the belief that theatre can help audience members cope with situationsin their everyday lives by mirroring their dilemmas on stage. This is not a new idea; what isimportant for the purpose of this study is that, because the artists believed the performancecould impact on young people’s lives, they are likely to have written, directed, and creatededucational programming in ways that reflect these beliefs. Because they believed it ispossible for theatre to influence spectators, they likely were cognizant of how the specificartistic choices they made could potentially affect young spectators.

The artists argued theatre’s ability to teach young people about their lives and helpthem cope with difficult situations stems in part from theatre’s mimetic properties. Alcalánoted:

When [young people] see themselves reflected up there, or there’s an issueon stage . . . I think it helps kids deal with certain things. If there’s a kid outthere that’s dealing with their parents getting divorced, and they’re seeing itrepresented up on stage, at least they can relate to it and they know they’re notalone. They can see somebody else working through something.

In the case of GNTB, then, audiences see a family dealing with the loss of a family member,and this might help those spectators deal with a similar situation in their own lives, perhapseven the death of a pet. Alcalá stressed that it is important for TYA companies to carefullyselect the material they present because of its formative potential, saying: “We get so busyin our everyday lives that we forget that we are this huge influence to this little vessel that’scoming up into the world.” He noted that schools and parents give children “their realities,their thoughts, their principles.” Alcalá stated that he felt performances could also help con-struct children’s realities “because it’s a way for us to be able to get a message or a thoughtacross.” If an artist subscribes to Alcalá’s Lockean tabula rasa vision of childhood—thatyoung people are vessels filled with information by adults as they grow—it makes sensethat he or she might use theatre as a form of education to affect children’s attitudes, valuesand beliefs.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


Although there was general consensus that theatre has the potential to affect youngpeople’s values, York expressed some skepticism, noting: “Of course I want them to becompletely better human beings because they saw my play—I want them to be generousand open and tolerant. But . . . a play is a small thing.” Perhaps rather than necessar-ily changing spectators’ views directly, a play might raise issues for them that they havenot previously considered worthy of consideration. Said York, “I think what they see willinspire them to want to ask a question and to think.”

Theme 1: Social Status and Judging Others

In this and the following sections, I explore specific themes from the play, noting the artists’intentions regarding the theme and then exploring the quantitative and qualitative evidenceregarding spectators’ responses. One of the primary themes the artists expressed a desireto impart on young audience members was that people ought not to judge others based ontheir social class or other superficial characteristics. GNTB presents families from varioussocial strata and troubles representations of class. Alcalá noted the play was about “realiz-ing that status is not the end all.” Similarly, Snoyer Black expressed a desire for childrento emulate Aunt Patty’s journey:

I think hopefully the children will walk out of the play having a similar valueshift that Aunt Patty has, where she starts out really valuing the power and thestatus she thinks [Lucy Wainwright] has, and at the same time put[s] down theFingers family who live across the street. I think by the end of the play, she’shad a complete value shift and she now really values the quality of people thatthe Fingers family is and [not] the sort of falseness and pretentiousness andprejudiced personalities of the Wainwrights.

York noted that the Fingers, ostensibly of the lowest class in the play, also model anadmirable abstinence from judging others. She explained, “I think kids a lot of time eschewthe newcomer and the Fingers don’t; they’re very inviting, they’re very accepting.”

Alcalá also hoped that the play would help young spectators overcome the artificeof stereotypical labels because of the way it represented the Fingers children and othercharacters. He noted: “My hope is that they’re [going to] be able to see that reflection ofhow their parents treat them about other kids and they are empowered by believing thatthose kids are just fine.” Snoyer Black agreed: “I hope the kids take that same journey withAunt Patty and maybe learn—don’t judge a book by its cover . . . just take time to seethrough pretense.”

The preshow and postshow surveys included two statements that addressed judgingothers and how apt the respondents were to accept individuals different from themselves.The first assessed the “guilt by association” premise by asking if respondents agreed withthe claim that “the kind of people you are friends with says a lot about the type of personyou are.” The latter aimed to measure how accepting respondents were of those with per-ceived differences, stating: “If someone is very different from me, I would probably notbe friends with him or her.” There was a significant decrease in agreement with the firststatement after seeing the production and a slight decrease in agreement with the second,as indicated in Figures 1 and 2.

Prior to the performance, a clear majority of the respondents agreed that the type ofpeople you are friends with says a lot about the kind of person you are (72 percent, with 16

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

38 M. Omasta

Strongly agreeAgree

DisagreeStronglydisagree

Preshow

Postshow0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

PreshowPostshow

Preshow 16% 56% 22% 6%

Postshow 6% 41% 41% 11%

Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree

Figure 1. The type of people you are friends with says a lot about the kind of person you are (colorfigure available online).

percent “strongly” agreeing). After the show, only 6 percent of respondents still “strongly”felt this way, with a total of 47 percent agreeing. The majority (52 percent) now disagreed,with 11 percent strongly disagreeing. A two-tailed, paired t-test calculated p < .001, whichsuggested a significant difference based on the intervention.

The second statement, on the other hand, began with a high rate of disagreement, withmost students stating that they would probably be friends with someone even if that personwas “very different” from them. Thus, although the respondents felt you could “tell a lotabout” someone based on who he or she was friends with, that information would notnecessarily prevent them from developing friendships with those who are different. Onlya small shift took place in response to the statement before and after the show, with a 1percent decrease in “strong” agreement and a 5 percent decrease in agreement, makingthis one of the least-affected beliefs. A t-test calculated p < .151, which indicated a slightdifference in responses due to the intervention.

The qualitative data suggest that the students received/understood the message that theartists intended; one stated quite frankly: “I think it said, like, don’t judge people.” Anotherexplained: “I think [it talked] about judging and responsibility, you know, making goodchoices.” A third student described Willa Jo’s attitudes by using the exact words SnoyerBlack used to explain what she hoped students would take away from the show: “[Willa Jo]gave the meaning of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover.”’ The respondents often identifiedwith and generally applauded Willa Jo for this. When discussing the Wainwrights’ atti-tudes, almost everyone agreed that Cynthia was highly judgmental (e.g., “She felt like [thesisters] weren’t perfect, like, she was, and they needed to be perfect”). Many respondents

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


Strongly agree AgreeDisagree

Stronglydisagree

Preshow

Postshow0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

PreshowPostshow

Preshow 6% 14% 48% 32%Postshow 5% 10% 48% 38%


Figure 2. If someone is very different from me, I would probably not be friends with him or her(color figure available online).

fervently disagreed with the Wainwrights’ beliefs and described them as “pretty messedup” and “screwed up so bad.” One of the girls expressed her disagreement with LucyWainwright’s beliefs by noting: “She believed that she could teach somebody to change,but they had to change by [themselves].”

Not only did the students understand the theme the artists intended, the data also sug-gest a significant difference in the way some students felt about judgment and social classbefore and after viewing the production. One respondent reported his attitude toward judg-ing others had changed: “Before [I] felt like it was OK to kind of judge people like a littlebit, but like after I saw the play I realized that we shouldn’t judge people by just the waythey’re poor or something that happened in their family. You should judge them by theirpersonality.” However, another responded that he didn’t think the play had changed hisattitudes, values, or beliefs much “because I usually don’t judge people.” This statementcomplements the finding from the surveys that some of the respondents were already inagreement with the artists’ desired views before viewing the play. However, the data alsosuggest some students interpreted the experience differently than others. One participantclaimed that the play changed her beliefs about how to react to others who judged you orwere mean to you and said that after she saw the play, she believed: “If you have to snap onsomebody go ahead and snap on ‘em,”—a likely reference to Willa Jo’s behavior at variouspoints in the play and not necessarily a prosocial change.

When considering why participants’ attitudes about judgment were affected, weshould remember that in the play, Willa Jo and Little Sister befriended the Fingers chil-dren, whose material circumstances were very different from their own. That is, the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

40 M. Omasta

performance depicted a situation where one could not “tell a lot about” Willa Jo andLittle Sister based only on the fact that they spent time with the Fingers (or vice versa).Even though the characters were fictional, the audience members found the situationbelievable.6

Additionally, seeing the characters’ relationships may have encouraged some specta-tors to believe that avoiding friendships with certain people because of their differences isunwise or unjust. Because the audience members generally sympathized with the childrenand endorsed their friendships, the spectators may have adopted the characters’ values.The characters most respondents reported identifying with were Willa Jo, Little Sister,Liz, Isaac, and Uncle Hob, all of whom were actively nonjudgmental. The students espe-cially valued these characters because they were so open to developing new friendshipsand accepting people as they were.

On the other hand, Aunt Patty and the Wainwrights exhibited overt judgment ofothers throughout the performance. All of the participants rejected these characters’ judg-mental tendencies. None of the participants said they identified with Lucy or CynthiaWainwright, and none of the girls reported identifying with Aunt Patty, though a few boysdid. Instead, almost all of the girls identified with Willa Jo, and many of the boys with Lizand Isaac Fingers—all characters that the participants felt were generally nonjudgmental.Even though the characters were fictional, respondents may have empathized with and feltsympathy or antipathy for them just as if they were real people in the real world.7

Thus, we might consider the characters with whom the participants identified to bethose they felt sympathy for, while they felt antipathy8 for those they did not identifywith, just as they might sympathize or develop antipathy for real people in their real lives.Cognitive theory suggests that the spectators empathized with all of the characters beforechoosing how to respond to them based on their extant values. As McConachie noted:

Sympathetic and empathetic investments are best understood as general orien-tations to a spectator’s pleasure or pain as experienced vicariously throughactor/characters during a performance. Actor/characters that bring mostlypleasure to others in their fictional worlds and to empathizing spectators arebest candidates for sympathetic engagement, while those that cause repeatedpain are usually condemned to antipathy. (2008, 100)

Thus, even though the participants understood the Wainwrights’ situation and intentions,they still condemned their judgments. Because many spectators empathized and sympa-thized with the Fingers children, the spectators vicariously suffered when the Wainwrights

6Green observed that “when a reader feels that she has experienced realistic narrative events,the lessons implied by those events may seem more powerful” (2004, 251). Her theory about literaryreaders seems to apply to theatrical spectators as well. Spectators’ willingness to accept as believablethe sisters’ friendship with the Fingers may have led them to believe more generally that it is plausiblefor people to spend time with others who seem very unlike themselves in some regards.

7Such responses would align with the findings of Thalia Goldstein (2009), who showed herparticipants a series of film clips that she told them were either fictional or nonfictional. She foundthat there was no significant difference in her participants’ levels of emotional response (degreesof sadness and anxiety felt) when viewing the works. Both the “true stories” and “fictional stories”elicited the same emotions.

8McConachie explains antipathy as: “Instead of hoping for the best for an actor/character,antipathy constitutes schadenfreude, the enjoyment of another person’s misfortune. As with sympa-thy, the mind/brain makes a judgment about another person’s relative goodness before the spectatoris aware of ‘feeling against”’ (2008, 68).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


attacked Liz and Isaac. Therefore, spectators were able to explicate why the charactersbehaved as they did while still rejecting their choices. Some of the boys noted that eventhough they sometimes took their anger out on others like Cynthia did, they believed it waswrong to do so.

Overall, audience members sympathized with the nonjudgmental characters and feltantipathy for the judgmental characters. The participants seemed to understand the prin-ciple that the artists intended to convey. Although some already agreed with the idea, astatistically and qualitatively significant shift did occur within the group at large, and moreparticipants agreed with the idea after seeing the performance than beforehand, indicatingthat, regarding this particular theme, there seems to have been some correlation betweenartist intention and audience response.

Theme 2: Dealing With Grief

A second primary theme in the play that the artists identified stems from the ways thevarious characters dealt with grief. Alcalá described:

Aunt Patty suppresses it, Hob feels really bad but he’s just trying to be supportfor Patty. [. . .] Willa Jo bottles it up inside, even at times lies so that she doesn’thave to deal with it. And she can lie because Little Sister doesn’t speak, that’show she’s dealing with it.

The artists agreed that the characters’ initial coping strategies were not ideal and val-ued talking about one’s feelings and embracing the opportunity to heal together as afamily/community over isolationist methods. York argued: “Loss drives us into ourselveswhen what it really should do is drive us to reach out to each other.”

Alcalá explained: “I’m hoping [the play] actually will create a dialogue for adultsand children to have open conversations about how to deal with, on a basic level, howto deal with the loss of a pet even, to have that conversation instead of bottling it up.” Heemphasized again his belief that people need to actively work through troubles in their livesinstead of passively internalizing them and noted: “If you just say ‘I’m sad, I know you’resad too,’ and you try to move on with your life, you’re not working through it. And I’mhoping that they see that working through it together is how they’re going to get throughit. That’s how they’re [going to] grow, because they can’t do it on their own.”

Snoyer Black believed this theme would resonate well with the production’s audi-ences and noted that the sense of loss that the play deals with “is certainly not unknownto contemporary children, and giving them an opportunity to see how other people dealwith crisis and loss and challenges of this sort, I think everybody’s finding that to be a veryvaluable reason to bring them to the play.”

The plot suggests that in times of grief, it is better to talk through one’s problems withothers rather than keep them to oneself. At the start of the play, Willa Jo, Little Sister,Aunt Patty, and Uncle Hob are each dealing with the death of Baby largely by avoidingany discussion of the issue. By the play’s end, they have gathered together on the roof in acommunal celebration of her life, having finally realized that this is what they need to do toget past their pain. However, although all of the characters experienced this shift in beliefs,the quantitative data suggest that very few of the audience members did, as illustrated inFigure 3.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

42 M. Omasta

Strongly agreeAgree


Preshow

Postshow0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

PreshowPostshow

Preshow 5% 29% 48% 19%

Postshow 6% 22% 56% 16%


Figure 3. When some people are dealing with hard times, the best thing for them to do is work itout themselves, instead of talking about it with other people (color figure available online).

The artists’ “target” response to this statement was disagreement—that is, rejection ofthe idea that working out a problem by oneself is the best way to deal with grief. Althougha small number of respondents who agreed with the statement before the show disagreedafterwards, there was also a slight increase in the number of respondents who “stronglyagreed” and a decrease in the number who “strongly disagreed.” A t-test returned p <

1.000, suggesting no significant difference between the preshow and postshow responses.Overall, despite the emphasis the artists placed on conveying this idea, viewing the per-formance did not significantly influence students’ beliefs regarding how to deal withgrief.

Bearing in mind that this theme was a priority for the adult artists, I asked partici-pants to identify what they felt the characters believed about dealing with grief and thento express their own beliefs on the topic. All of the respondents agreed that the charactersin the play dealt with grief by keeping it to themselves and not talking about it. Almostnone of the participants discussed the final scene in the play in which the characters cametogether on the roof in a moment of communal catharsis. Rather, their responses centeredon the actions (or inactions) of the characters throughout the majority of the play, primarilythat the characters believed the best way to deal with grief was “not to talk about it.”

The boys noted that this was especially true of Little Sister: “She wouldn’t say any-thing because she said she wanted to stay at the fair, and the baby died because of that.”They agreed that she believed she needed to be silent because “she thought [Baby’s death]was her fault.” One respondent noted Little Sister’s presumably proactive attempts to phys-ically get near to Baby: “She always wanted to be close to her sister and go up in the tree.”

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


Respondents agreed that Willa Jo “really didn’t want to talk about” the situation, andthat Uncle Hob “just kind of dropped it” and “left it in the past.” The boys noted that AuntPatty “kept it in ’til the end,” while the girls offered more complex explanations of Patty’sbehavior, ranging from “sort of ignoring her feelings really and not showing them,” to“taking her anger out on the sisters.” One girl speculated that Aunt Patty’s approach to hergrief may have been altruistic: “Maybe she tried not to show it because that would make itworse for Little Sister and Willa Jo. So, she just tried to hide it.”

When asked what they thought the best way to deal with grief was, the male respon-dents gave quick and harmonized answers: “talk about it,” “express yourself,” and “talkabout it like crazy.” Though they indicated that communicating with others was the bestapproach, they did not necessarily state that it was the one they would use. One male notedthat the characters “didn’t talk about it because they—it would just stay inside. Like me,for example, I build everything up inside and then until it blows up or something, whichis a bad thing, to not tell people the problems—which happens to me every day anyways.”Although the boys seemed to “get the message” from the play, they did not necessarilybelieve they would act upon it in their lives.

The female respondents also largely agreed that the “best” way to deal with grief wasto express it to others, and they generated a greater number of ways to do so than theboys. They believed that someone in grief ought to “talk about it with somebody whounderstands” or consult a therapist. One girl noted:

When they have something in their life happen that’s kind of strong like theydid, I notice that it’s better to like tell people about it, ’cause like how the littlegirl she kept it, so she was misunderstood. And when her family knew about it,it was like much better. So, it’s like much better to tell people about what it is.

Though agreeing that this was sometimes the best solution, another female replied: “It kindof depends on the situation. In the situation when the baby died, I think it was much betterfor her to talk about it with her family and her friends, somebody who she trusts. But there’salso situations where I think maybe it would be better to keep it to yourself.”

Although many of the respondents were able to name the response the artists seemed tobe looking for, this may be more a case of participant compliance or “stating the obvious”than any actual change in beliefs. The quick, brief responses of “talk about it” from themales, coupled with the fact that not a single participant discussed actually implementingcommunication about grief in his or her life, suggest that there may have been little to nochange in participants’ beliefs about the matter.

A key question, then, is why the play affected participants’ views regarding judgmentwhile it did not affect their views about dealing with grief. There are several possibleexplanations for this. One of the simplest may be that there was no effect on the latterbelief because most students (67 percent) already believed the artists’ target belief aboutgrief prior to the production. Therefore, there were fewer people to be swayed. However,earlier evidence seems to disconfirm this theory.9

Another possibility is that there was no effect because the characters did not adopt thetarget belief until the end of the play. Throughout the majority of their time on stage, they

9As indicated earlier, an even greater percentage of students (80%) had disagreed with the state-ment, “If someone was very different from me, I would probably not be friends with him or her.”Despite this already strong level of disagreement, there was still a significant difference in responsesto the statement after the performance.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

44 M. Omasta

believed that staying silent was the best way to deal with grief. When I asked students whatthe characters believed was the best way to deal with grief, they replied that the charactersthought it was best to keep their sadness to themselves. The participants made only fleetingmention of the final scene in the play. Because the characters that the audience sympathizedwith spent very little time performing their new attitudes, it may be that spectators didnot experience a “value shift” along with them at the play’s end. Whereas the theme ofjudgment was prevalent throughout the play, grief was not addressed explicitly.

Further, spectators sympathized with some characters (Willa Jo, Little Sister, and theFingers), who held one set of beliefs about judgment, while they felt antipathy for othercharacters (the Wainwrights) who held opposing beliefs. That is, two sides of the issuewere presented, and the sympathetic characters clearly fell on one end of the polemic. Incontrast, the characters wrestled internally about how to deal with grief—no antipatheticcharacters opined aloud that people ought to keep their grief to themselves. Thus, audiencesdid not experience the empathetic double pressure of this theme like they did regardingjudgment. Because conflicting views of how to deal with grief were not expressed aloud,but rather within the characters’ minds, this conflict may not have had the same potentialto affect audience members’ values.

Another possibility is that audiences did not build and sustain emotional engagementwith the characters’ views on grief. That is, despite empathizing with the characters, theymay not have become emotionally invested in this particular concern. As Frijda and oth-ers noted, it is very difficult to convince people (e.g., audience members) to change theirminds by presenting information alone—it is crucial to have emotive force behind thepersuasion (2000). Audiences may have become emotionally engaged with the issue ofjudgment because there was a clear conflict between characters for whom they felt sym-pathy and for whom they felt antipathy. If they felt that characters they identified withwere being attacked, they may have vicariously experienced this pain. On the other hand,because there was no significant intercharacter conflict on the issue of grief—characterswere internally conflicted, but did not dwell on the issue—the play may have lacked theemotive force to alter spectators’ values.

Finally, it may be important that characters and situations be performed realistically toaffect spectators’ beliefs. Some participants may not have found it realistic for the charac-ters to reverse their views on how to deal with grief at the end of the show. Green arguedthat “individuals who are transported into a narrative world are likely to change their real-world beliefs and attitudes in response to information, claims or events in a story” (2004,248). For spectators to be transported in Green’s sense would require that they believe inthe narrative they saw performed. If audiences deemed the characters’ abrupt about-faceimplausible, their beliefs may have been rendered less malleable.

Thus, many factors may determine whether or not a performance can affect specta-tors’ beliefs. Audiences members’ extant values help determine which characters they willsympathize with and to what extent. The differing values of characters that spectators doand do not identify with come into play, and it seems that audiences’ values are more likelyto be affected if characters they identify and sympathize with hold the target values, whilecharacters they feel antipathy for simultaneously hold opposing values. It is also impor-tant for characters to hold the target values for a period of time sufficient for spectators toembrace them. Productions in which characters and situations seem plausible and realisticare also more likely to be “affectively effective.” Thus, contrary to the idea espoused byartists such as Brecht, who believed audiences needed to be “alienated” and detached froma performance in order to learn from it (1992, 125), realistically staged drama may be themost effective performance mode to affect adolescent spectators’ values.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


Theme 3: Malleable Attitudes

Alcalá pointed out that Aunt Patty’s journey illustrates how adults’ opinions can evolveover time, rather than remaining static as some children might imagine. He hoped youngpeople might see their own parents in Aunt Patty and realize their parents could changelike she did. He explained:

If there was a child in the audience that had a parent who had very biasedopinions about certain types of people, and that child saw Aunt Patty on stagedoing the exact same thing, and then watched her go through that process ofopening up to a different perspective and . . . allowing them into her life, theyoung audience member probably would see some hope that that would happenin the future for his or her parents. That would be great . . . it will allow thechild to believe that there can be change in people.

While most (60 percent) of the respondents already believed that adults could change theiropinions about people, this increased to a stronger majority of 83 percent after watchingthe show, as illustrated in Figure 4.

As Figure 4 indicates, none of the respondents strongly agreed with the statementafter seeing the production, and only 17 percent agreed. The one respondent who had“strongly agreed” with the statement prior to viewing the production reduced his orher response to “agree” after viewing the production, which may indicate that even

Strongly agreeAgree


Preshow

Postshow0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%PreshowPostshow



Figure 4. Once an adult has an opinion about certain types of people, the adult will always havethat opinion (color figure available online).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

46 M. Omasta

if a performance does not completely reverse a spectator’s belief, it may modify howstrongly she feels about that belief . A t-test returned p < .004. This, along with thefact that 46 percent of the respondents who initially agreed with the statement prior tothe performance reversed their view afterward, strongly suggests that viewing the pro-duction had a significant impact on these young people’s beliefs regarding this particularstatement.

The qualitative data reveal that the students did note Aunt Patty’s transformation; oneparticipant stated her beliefs changed “very much” during the course of the play. However,they also noticed changes in other characters. One participant explained that she felt thatLiz considered Willa Jo her best friend but was upset that Willa Jo did not tell her thetruth about her father. Liz’s angry attitude quickly faded though, as one participant noted:“When she found out the reason she was like, ‘That’s fine. You didn’t have to tell me if youdidn’t want to.”’ This statement suggests that Liz’s attitudes were flexible as she learnedmore about situations.

Theme 4: Adult Discernment

In addition to assessing students’ responses to the various themes and ideas that the artistsintended to communicate, I also designed survey statements to assess their response toa theme I felt was embedded in the play but which was potentially subversive and notnecessarily intended by the artists. Two of the three adults in the play (Aunt Patty and LucyWainwright) consistently performed what I felt were judgmental and antisocial attitudes.The adults often made what could be considered poor choices throughout the play andwere not always exemplars of prosocial behavior. While I do not criticize the play forthis,10 I was curious how it might impact young audience members’ opinions of adultsmore generally and designed two survey statements to explore this.

The first statement queried whether “adults usually know what is best for kids,”while the second dealt more specifically with the idea that parents were usually correctin their assessments of who their children ought to be friends with. There were differencesin responses to both statements, with a significant difference to the latter statement, asindicated in Figures 5 and 6.

Prior to viewing the performance, the majority of respondents (54 percent) agreed that“adults usually know what is best for kids.” This figure fell 11 percent on the postview-ing survey, resulting in a majority (57 percent) of respondents later disagreeing with thestatement. This finding was primarily the result of students changing their responses from“agree” to “disagree.” There was no change in the percentage of students “strongly agree-ing” and a very small shift in “strongly disagree.” This may indicate that the productioninfluenced the beliefs of young people who did not have strong feelings about the subjectbut was unable to reach those with a more entrenched belief about this particular subject.A t-test returned p < .260 for this statement.

The difference in response to the statement that indicated that adults knew best whotheir children ought to spend time with was more significant. Though a majority of respon-dents (57 percent) already disagreed with the statement before viewing the production, thelevel of agreement fell an additional 16 percent after viewing the production, while thenumber of respondents “strongly disagreeing” increased 10 percent. A t-test returned p <

.002, strongly suggesting that a significant difference occurred.

10In fact, I applaud the inclusion of imperfect and decidedly “human” adult characters.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


Strongly agreeAgree


Preshow

Postshow0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50% PreshowPostshow

Preshow 8% 46% 32% 14%

Postshow 8% 35% 44% 13%


Figure 5. Adults usually know what is best for kids (color figure available online).

Overall, the surveys indicate that after viewing the production, young audience mem-bers were less likely to believe that adults know what is best for them or that their parentsknew who they should avoid spending time with. The degree of change demonstrated inFigure 6 may be due in part to the fact that the main target of the adults’ disdain was theamiable and humorous Fingers children, whom audience members consistently felt posi-tive about. Meanwhile, the statement, “Adults usually know what is best for kids,” is moreabstract, and in some of these situations, adults did arguably know what was “best” for thechildren.

During focus groups, students were consistently critical of Aunt Patty and LucyWainwright. Respondents roundly rejected the attitudes they felt Aunt Patty espoused.Male participants focused on her desire to be accepted into higher levels of the town’ssocial strata and noted that she was “trying to impress everybody so she could get intolike that club thing with the ladies.” They were critical of Aunt Patty’s attitude that thegirls should change to meet her standards, with one noting that “they weren’t comfortable[going to charm school], but she kind of made them for their own good.” Another criticizedPatty and said, “She’s kind of crazy. [. . .] She gets mad,” as opposed to his own attitude,which he described as “happy all the time.”

The females agreed that Aunt Patty’s attitude toward the girls was undesirable, thoughthey emphasized that her actions were due to her belief that the girls “weren’t good enough”and that she was “feeling sorry for” the girls. While they agreed with the males that AuntPatty was “competitive” about climbing the social ladder, the female respondents wentbeyond the surface and said that Aunt Patty wanted to be just like Lucy Wainwright. They

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

48 M. Omasta

Strongly agreeAgree


Preshow

Postshow0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%PreshowPostshow



Figure 6. If my parents tell me I should stay away from certain people I go to school with or wholive near me, they are probably right (color figure available online).

argued that “Aunt Patty liked what Lucy . . . could give [her], like the little club thing, butshe didn’t like her.”

Both groups believed Aunt Patty most valued her reputation, popularity, and materialobjects such as her house. One girl stated that Aunt Patty valued “a kind of control” over thegirls. However, the respondents did not describe the characters as unidimensional; althoughthe females did not mention Aunt Patty valuing her family, two boys did bring this up andargued: “She did like both objects and popularity, but she still valued her family. She justdidn’t show it that much.” In contrast, both groups noted that Uncle Hob valued his family.

Conclusions

As discussed earlier, many theatre practitioners believe that their productions can alignyoung spectators’ values with those in the production. The artists involved with GNTBgenerally believed that the performance could function this way. It appears that GNTB didaffect some of the young people’s values regarding some of the themes presented in theplay. The chart in Figure 7 represents a general overview of the artists’ intentions and howthe audience members responded to them.

The artists hoped to convey that people ought not to judge others, particularly withregard to their social class. The data suggest that the young audience members not onlyunderstood this idea but often came to believe it after viewing the production. Yet whilethe spectators seemed to have “gotten the message” the artists wanted to convey regardingthe best ways to deal with grief, it does not appear that the production influenced their

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014


Expressed by artists Spectators

understand/ ÒGetitÓ

Statistically significant difference

Qualitative difference

Judging others/Social status

Dealing with grief

Malleable attitudes LEANING

YES

AdultsÕdiscernment

LEANING YES

Figure 7. Overview of artist intentions and audience responses to themes (color figure availableonline).

opinions on the matter. There was a statistically significant difference regarding whetherthe students believed adults’ attitudes are malleable and evolve over time; the quantitativedata also lean toward confirming this. Finally, although the artists did not necessarily intendto increase audience members’ skepticism about adults’ judgments, there was a statisticallysignificant difference in the way students felt about this before and after the production, andthe qualitative data also suggest the play increased students’ skepticism regarding adultdecision making.

In summary, there were varying degrees of congruency between GNTB’s artists’ inten-tions and the way young people actually engaged with and responded to the production.The level of congruence varied depending on the particular theme: When it came to socialclass or the idea that adults’ opinions can change over time, there was a high degree of con-gruence. However, there was no significant increase in student agreement with the artists’intended message about the best way to deal with grief. Therefore, my analysis suggeststhat artists’ investment in conveying a particular belief does not seem to increase the proba-bility that spectators will adopt that value. Rather, the nature of the attitudes and beliefs thatare presented, along with how they are presented, determine their ability to affect audiencemembers’ values.

References

Bogdan, R. C., and S. K. Biklen. 2007. Qualitative research for education: An introduction totheories and methods. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Brecht, B. 1992. The street scene. In Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic, trans. anded. J. Williett, 12129. New York: Hill and Wang. (Originally published 1938–1940.)

Brosius, P. 2001. Can theatre + young people = social change? The answer must be yes. Theatre 31(3): 74–75.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

50 M. Omasta

Chappell, D. 2010. From audience member to citizen: TYA scripts, ideology, and communitas. YouthTheatre Journal 24 (1): 9–18.

Frijda, N. H., A. S. R. Manstead, and S. Bem, eds. 2000. Emotions and beliefs: How feelings influencethoughts. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Goldstein, T. 2009. The pleasure of unadulterated sadness: Experiencing sorrow in fiction, nonfiction,and ‘in person.’ Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and Art 3 (4): 232–37.

Grady, S. 1995. Between production and reception: Constructing experience and meaning[s] intheatre work for young audiences. PhD diss., Univ. Wisconsin-Madison.

Green, M. 2004. Transportation into narrative worlds: The role of prior knowledge and perceivedrealism. Discourse Processes 38 (2): 247–66.

Greig, A., J. Taylor, and T. MacKay. 2007. Doing research with children. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage.Harvey, M. L., and D. Miles. 2009. ‘And then they came for me’: The effectiveness of a theatri-

cal performance and study guide on middle-school students’ holocaust knowledge and empathicconcern. Youth Theatre Journal 23 (2): 91–102.

Klein, J. 2005. From children’s perspectives: A model of aesthetic processing in theatre. Journal ofAesthetic Education 39 (4): 40–57.

McConachie, B. 2008. Engaging audiences: A cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre. NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mirrione, J. 1993. Playwriting of T.I.E. In Learning through theatre: New perspectives on theatre ineducation, ed. T. Jackson, 2nd ed., 71–90. New York: Routledge.

Omasta, M. 2009. Adolescent audiences’ affective engagement with theatre: A mixed-methods casestudy considering middle school students’ attitudes, values, and beliefs. PhD diss., Arizona StateUniv.

Saldaña, J. 2009. The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage.van de Water, M. 2009. TYA as cultural production: Aesthetics, meaning, and material conditions.

Youth Theatre Journal 23 (1): 15–21.Wartemann, G. 2009. Theatre as interplay: Processes of collective creativity in theatre for young

audiences. Youth Theatre Journal 23 (1): 6–14.Wilkinson, D., and P. Birmingham. 2003. Using research instruments: A guide for researchers.

London: RoutledgeFalmer.York, Y. 2008. Getting near to baby. Unpublished manuscript. New York: Gersh Agency.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

18 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

artist intention and audience reception in theatre for young audiences

Documents