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SUMMARY:Beyond the ‘grown up child’: the quality of childness in Matil
 da: The Musical - Erica Irving\, Faculty of Eudcation\, University of Camb
 ridge
DTSTART:20121023T120000Z
DTEND:20121023T130000Z
UID:TALK41195@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ting Ding
DESCRIPTION:Matilda: The Musical demonstrates how moving from page to stag
 e can provide new approaches to the vexed issue of maturation in children
 ’s stories.  This adaptation’s major innovation is its ethos of libera
 tion from pedantic narrative control\, created through a consistent attent
 ion to the child characters’ interest in telling stories\, both fictiona
 l and biographical. The tension between revolution and conservatism in Dah
 l’s writing for children is readily evident in the original 1988 novel\;
  the characters\, though typically extreme\, never break the familiar stru
 cture of the storybook English village\, where polite children are the ide
 al and narrator knows best. In the musical\, however\, the adaptors’ spe
 cific construction of the singing child as the essential storytelling vehi
 cle results in the staging of an active\, present negotiation between chil
 d and adult actors and audience members over the values of ‘childness’
  and ‘adultness’\, as well as a heightened sense of childhood as both 
 a distinct experience and a transient phase. Awareness of this paradox as 
 a fluid model of maturation can be summarised as a dialogue between two so
 ngs\, ‘Naughty’ and ‘ When I Grow Up’\, which will serve as the ce
 ntre of my analysis in this paper.\n
LOCATION:Room 2S3\, Donald McIntyre Building\, Faculty of Education\, 184 
 Hills Road\, Cambridge
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