The research project focuses on contemporary theatre for children as performed by adult artists. The project also looks at the relationship between school and theatre, while concentrating on the significance of communication work done (from a theatre pedagogy perspective) within this relationship.
Professional theatre for children and young people has enjoyed enormous growth in Switzerland during the last 20 years, with this particular artistic discipline undergoing increasing professionalisation as a result. In the debate surrounding aesthetic training, the subject is attracting increasing attention in terms of education policy. However, in the German-speaking world, it continues to have an image problem – as somehow being of lesser artistic value – and has been fighting for years for legitimacy from both a culture policy and aesthetic perspective. In the debate surrounding quality criteria for children's and youth theatre, artists and those organising events are being pressed ever harder to get to grips with their concepts, their own benchmarks, and particularly their young audience.
Based on four contemporary pieces of theatre for children aged 6 to 10 – taken from the cultural programme offered by schule&kultur – the research project investigates quality criteria associated with the world of children's theatre in German-speaking Switzerland. The idea is to review, by means of empirical studies, the concepts associated with contemporary children's theatre – guided by questions regarding both the quality of the experience for those receiving it and the prerequisites and conditions for opening up spaces that create aesthetic experiences.