Performing Arts in Early Childhood Education

Manon van de Water is the Vilas-Phipps Distinguished Achievement Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She is the author of Moscow Theatres for Young People: A Cultural History of Ideological Coercion and Artistic Innovation, 1917-2000 (2006); Dutch Theatre for Children (2008/2009), and Theatre, Youth, and Culture: A Critical and Historical Exploration (2012), for which she received the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE) Distinguished Book Award. She is past chair of ITYARN, the International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network for which she edited TYA, Culture, Society: International Essays in Theatre for Young Audiences (2012), translated in Spanish and Farsi, and Diversity, Representation, and Culture in TYA (2020). Her co- written textbook Drama and Education: Performance Methodologies for Teaching and Learning, is based on her teaching of drama for the past 25 years and has been translated in Mandarin. Van de Water was the lead researcher on “Mapping” (2018-2023)—a multifaceted project supported by Creative Europe, the EU program that co-finances art projects. For this project she edited and contributed to 'Mapping Research: A Map on the Aesthetics of Performing Arts for Early Years.

• Introduction.- Part I. Collaborations with the Very Young.- Ch.1 Performing Arts and Early Years.- Ch. 2 Research, Play, and Performance: Adults and Very Young Children as Co-Devisers.- Ch. 3 The Role of Aesthetic Performance Experiences for the Young in Making Meaning of their World.- Ch. 4 Dramaturgy of the Audience: The Creation of Immersion and Participation in Theatre for Early Years.- Part II. Case Studies.- Ch. 5 Meaningful Relationships and Performing for Early Years in Canada.- Ch. 6 Performing Arts for Early Years: A Political and Latin American ActCh. 6 Sensory Splendor: Aesthetic Exploration in Taiwanese Theatre for the Very Young.- Ch. 7 The Growth of the Early Years Sector in Ireland.- Ch. 8 How Does Stillness Speak to Very Young Children?.- Ch. 9 Appealing to the Senses, Appealing to Humanity.- Ch. 10 Beyond the Shadows: The Aesthetic Potentials of Traditional Shadow Puppetry in Contemporary Practice with Aboriginal Artists and the (Very) Young.- Part III. Theory and Practice.- Ch. 11 Emotional Self Agency Through Theatrical Experience in Early Years.- Ch. 12 “Do Words Matter in Performance for Early Years?.- ch. 13 Towards Sensuous Ecologies: Neurodiversity and Complex Embodiment in Choreography for Young Audiences.- Ch. 14 The Relation Between Cognition and Emotion in Theatre for Early Years: How Meaning Is Made.