The Swedish professional theatre for children and young audiences is in a constant change, development and renewal due to adulthoods shifting view and understanding of the child and childhood through the ages. The shifting discourse of childhood can be seen both in the various theatre performances for children and young audiences throughout the 20th century, but also in the constant shifting discussions and debates about what sort of performances are appropriate for children. The base of this thesis is a performance analysis of a recorded version of Unga Klara’s För att jag säger det from a gender perspective, with a focus on the stage setting and the mise-en-scène, along with the actors’ performative actions. The purpose is to examine if and how these theatrical signs counteracts or correlates with gender and hetero norms, but also investigate if the complex relationship between childhood and adulthood can be seen in the performance. To do this, I use a combination of hermeneutics, theatre semiotics and phenomenology as my main methodological starting point. Theories about gender performativity and discourse analysis in childhood studies serve as perspectives to the analysis and interpretation of the performance. The analysis starts with a brief introduction to the performance along with a discussion about the dramaturgical structure and the course of events and situations taking place in För att jag säger det. The analysis continues with a discussion about the theatrical space, in particular the stage space in relation to the starting point of the performance, along with the theatrical communication between the actors and the audience. Then, I discuss the theatrical signs that first caught my attention; the actors’ performative bodies and the music and stage sounds, where I analyse my comprehension of the actors’ performative bodies from a gender perspective. The analysis then continues to a more argument based interpretation of the interactions between the actors and the audience, and follows by a discussion of the actors impersonation of childhood and adulthood. In the last part of the analysis I identify and discuss my understanding of various themes and messages in För att jag säger det. The result of the study implies that a few sequences of the staging along with the actors’ performative bodies in För att jag säger det correlates to gender and hetero norms, but mostly the performance discourages normativity in general. The complex relationship between childhood and adulthood are however well established in the performance’s staging, and can be found in how the actors portraits childhood versus adulthood. It is also visible in the interactive communicational parts between the stage and the auditorium, which only occurs under the terms and conditions of the actors.

The purpose of this thesis is to see how the contemporary artistic theater for children handles the subjects concerning migration and representation, both artistically and practically. To respond to questions about how these subjects are thematized as well as contextualizing the development of the genre, a post-colonial intersectional perspective is used as a theoretical basis. Production analysis is used as a methodological basis for two productions that were staged at Unga Klara in 2018. Previous research shows that different views of children have dominated throughout the ages, which have represented themselves in the artistic culture for children. The artistic children's theater, or children's tragedy (barntragedi), has its roots in the political children's theater of the 1960- 1970’s and is based on the belief that children have the right to see their inner lives portrayed in an artistically qualitative way. This essay concludes that these two children’s tragedies thematize these topics through a combination of representing interculturality via multilingualism, and through contextualizing how children’s feelings are related to the political injustices that affect their lives.

CHILDHOOD REVOLUTION AT UNGA KLARA - A performance analysis of ’För att jag säger det’ from a gender perspective LINNÉA WÄISÄNEN Abstract The Swedish professional theatre for children and young audiences is in a constant change, development and renewal due to adulthoods shifting view and understanding of the child and childhood through the ages. The shifting discourse of childhood can be seen both in the various theatre performances for children and young audiences throughout the 20th century, but also in the constant shifting discussions and debates about what sort of performances are appropriate for children. The base of this thesis is a performance analysis of a recorded version of Unga Klara’s För att jag säger det from a gender perspective, with a focus on the stage setting and the mise-en-scène, along with the actors’ performative actions. The purpose is to examine if and how these theatrical signs counteracts or correlates with gender and hetero norms, but also investigate if the complex relationship between childhood and adulthood can be seen in the performance. To do this, I use a combination of hermeneutics, theatre semiotics and phenomenology as my main methodological starting point. Theories about gender performativity and discourse analysis in childhood studies serve as perspectives to the analysis and interpretation of the performance. The analysis starts with a brief introduction to the performance along with a discussion about the dramaturgical structure and the course of events and situations taking place in För att jag säger det. The analysis continues with a discussion about the theatrical space, in particular the stage space in relation to the starting point of the performance, along with the theatrical communication between the actors and the audience. Then, I discuss the theatrical signs that first caught my attention; the actors’ performative bodies and the music and stage sounds, where I analyse my comprehension of the actors’ performative bodies from a gender perspective. The analysis then continues to a more argument based interpretation of the interactions between the actors and the audience, and follows by a discussion of the actors impersonation of childhood and adulthood. In the last part of the analysis I identify and discuss my understanding of various themes and messages in För att jag säger det. The result of the study implies that a few sequences of the staging along with the actors’ performative bodies in För att jag säger det correlates to gender and hetero norms, but mostly the performance discourages normativity in general. The complex relationship between childhood and adulthood are however well established in the performance’s staging, and can be found in how the actors portraits childhood versus adulthood. It is also visible in the interactive communicational parts between the stage and the auditorium, which only occurs under the terms and conditions of the actors. Keywords: Unga Klara, gender, performativity, performance analysis, childhood revolution, theatre for children and young audiences