Book Review: The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children\u27s Experiences of Theatre by Matthew Reason

Matthew Reason’s The Young Audience explores elementary-aged children’s engagement with theatrical performances. Drawing on extensive research, Reason illustrates children’s often sophisticated aesthetic sensibilities, and calls for those in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) to build their work on a foundation of respect for children. Throughout the book, he scrutinizes a priori assumptions and theories about children and TYA, challenging these assumptions with empirical evidence from his original qualitative case studies. This book testifies both to young audience members’ abilities to engage with theatre on multiple levels and to the value of empirical research with young people