Victorian Girls and At-­home Theatricals: Performing and Playing with Possible Futures

During the long nineteenth century, amateur, juvenile at-home theatricals were a popular pastime in English middle-class homes. The scripts, the process of “getting-up” a play, and opportunity to perform a variety of historical, fairy tale, and “Oriental” characters offered young people, especially girls, opportunities to act agentically, to explore alternate identities, and to imagine possible futures for themselves that went beyond the conventional expectations for Victorian girls. These performances were especially potent in the mid- to late- nineteenth century because at that time social, political, legal, education, and career opportunities for girls were frequently challenged and gradually changing: at-home theatrical experiences encouraged and enabled girls to push at the increasingly porous boundaries that contained their daily lives. I focus on English scripts (1850 and 1910) published for the young people’s home market, related fiction and newspaper articles, and a range of diaries, letters, memoirs, playbills, and juvenile newspapers written by children for their families. Methodologically, following Doreen Massey (2005) and Rebecca Schneider (2005), I adopt a fluid conception of space and time in order to employ late twentieth and twenty-first century scholarship on girls, especially in drama education settings (Gallagher 2001; Hatton 2013; Neelands and Nelson 2013). Although girls today cannot speak for located Victorian middle-class girls, recent experiences help to inform how nineteenth-century girls’ performer and spectator experiences might have stretched their imaginations regarding desirable identities and futures. I lean on the following theoretical lenses: Jill Dolan’s “utopian performatives” (2006); object and thing theory (Robin Bernstein 2011; Bill Brown 2001; Andrew Sofer 2003); feminist reinterpretations of Orientalism and connections between adolescence and race (Nancy Lesko 2012). The analysis demonstrates that playwrights used their scripts as vehicles to challenge and discuss contemporary socio-political issues, and through theatricals girls could expand their imaginations regarding their identities and their own futures.

Department dc:contributor.department

Drama

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Fitzsimmons Frey, Heather Marie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gallagher, Kathleen M

• Amateur Theatre
• Girlhood
• Hope
• Identity
• Juvenile Theatre
• Nineteenth-Century Theatre

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/70812

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/70812