A Brief Survey of the Development of Dramatic Literature for Children Roger L. Bedard (bio) The history of dramatic literature for children on this continent is a confused and confusing trail of professional and amateur endeavors, of plays meant to be performed by children and plays meant to be performed for children. The repertoire of children's plays was born in late nineteenth century settlement house moralities and informal classroom dramas, nurtured by a short-lived interest by professional theatre producers, maintained by amateur theatre organizations, and ultimately brought to maturity by professional theatre organizations. But while the history of these plays developed along circuitous routes, it follows a course of ever-increasing literary and theatrical sophistication. During the forty-year period from approximately 1880 until 1920, the professional theatre first produced children's plays, and those tentative experiments helped establish theatre for children as a legitimate and popular theatre form. This activity, in turn, led to the development of a small body of children's plays that were subsequently performed in theatres throughout the country. The major portion of this early repertoire—apart from scores of playlets and pageants written for classroom and playground use—consisted of familiar stories dramatized into crudely-constructed, sentimental melodramas. These early plays are distinguished more for their pioneering position in the development of the literature than for any value inherent in the works themselves. And once the economic potential of this limited repertoire was exhausted, professional producers abandoned the field almost entirely. By 1920, the first phase of the development of dramatic literature for children had essentially come to an end. During the nineteen-twenties, the few plays developed in the previous decades were produced repeatedly, as amateur producers, like the professionals who preceded them, quickly recognized the profits (both economic and otherwise) to be gained by offering plays with these familiar titles for child audiences. It was not until 1928, when Charlotte B. Chorpenning began to write children's plays, that American children's theatre slowly began to break from this lethargic state. While Chorpenning relied almost entirely on fairy tale subjects for the more than forty plays she added to the repertoire, she approached her work with a sense of dramatic form and a sensitivity to the child audience that demonstrably raised the standards of dramatic literature for children. Under Chorpenning's leadership, a renaissance occurred in American children's theatre, and by 1945 scores of new playwrights were working in the field. In 1949 the Children's Scripts Evaluation Committee of the American Educational Theatre Association compiled a list of sixty-one "recommended" full-length plays for children.1 This list, divided among "Fairy Tale Plays," "Favorite Story Plays," and "Historical Plays," reflects both the quantitative growth of the field to that time and the very narrow view of children's plays that had been perpetuated. The dramatists of that day had yet to venture successfully into wholly original material. While this second period in the development of the literature brought both qualitative and quantitative change to the repertoire, by 1950 children's drama had become virtually synonomous with moralistic fairy tale plays, dramatized in the style of the "well-made play." It took a renewed interest in children's theatre by professional producers to bring about a higher level of sophistication. The most visible change in children's theatre after mid-century was a gradual increase in professional production. Beginning with a few groups formed in New York in the nineteen-fifties, the field grew, until by 1970 there were professional children's theatre companies in most of the large cities in the United States, as well as touring groups operating in smaller communities. This new professional network quickly exerted pressure for change in the literature. For every new theatre company content to perform a familiar fairy tale, there was another intent upon developing new plays that more imaginatively addressed the needs of modern audiences. From such companies came vaudeville revues, dramas based on current events, story theatre, comedy sketches, improvised drama, profiles of historical figures, and musical dramas, all of which have little in common except a deliberate avoidance of the traditional fairy tale material. By the late...