About Shauna
Shauna Vey has been researching and writing about child performers for over a decade. An Equity-stage-manager-turned-scholar, Vey personally observed the world of child performers and their handlers on commercial film shoots and the stages of Broadway, opera, and ballet.
To conduct research on her current book, Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre: The Work of the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors, Vey traveled to many of the same places where the Marsh Children performed... Read More. |
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 Nineteenth-Century 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 Nineteenth-Century 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. This book is available for purchase now.