Beyond Innocence

The second volume of Jane Goodall's remarkable self-portrait in letters, Beyond Innocence details some of the eminent scientist's greatest triumphs and her deepest tragedies. It covers the years following the publication of her groundbreaking book In the Shadow of Man, which, along with her articles in National Geographic, made her famous. Goodall's candid letters recount major events in her life and research, including her astonishing discoveries about chimpanzee behavior, the birth and raising of her son, the breakup of her marriage to Hugo van Lawick, the kidnapping by guerrillas of a group of her students, her marriage to Derek Bryceson and his death, and her growing concern about the future of her beloved chimpanzees at Gombe and elsewhere in the world. Beyond Innocence tells how many of the dreams of Goodall's youth were shattered, but also how she changed from a rather private observer to a public crusader.

The second volume of Jane Goodall's remarkable self-portrait in letters, Beyond Innocence details some of the eminent scientist's greatest triumphs and her deepest tragedies. It covers the years following the publication of her groundbreaking book In the Shadow of Man, which, along with her articles in National Geographic, made her famous. Goodall's candid letters recount major events in her life and research, including her astonishing discoveries about chimpanzee behavior, the birth and raising of her son, the breakup of her marriage to Hugo van Lawick, the kidnapping by guerrillas of a group of her students, her marriage to Derek Bryceson and his death, and her growing concern about the future of her beloved chimpanzees at Gombe and elsewhere in the world. Beyond Innocence tells how many of the dreams of Goodall's youth were shattered, but also how she changed from a rather private observer to a public crusader.

On a global platform we are witnessing the increased visibility of the people we call children and teenagers as political activists. Meanwhile, across the contemporary performance landscape, children are participating as performers and collaborators in ways that resonate with this figure of the child activist. Beyond Innocence: Children in Performance proposes that performance has the ability to offer alternatives to hegemonic perceptions of the child as innocent, in need of protection, and apolitical. Through an in-depth analysis of selected performances shown in the UK within the past decade, alongside newly gathered documentation on children’s participation in professional performance in their own words, this book considers how performance might offer more capacious representations of and encounters with children beyond the nostalgic and protective adult gaze elicited within mainstream contexts. Motivated by recent collaborations with children on stage that reimagine the figure of the child, the book offers a new approach to both reading age in performance and also doing research with children rather than on or about them. By redressing the current imbalance between the way that we read children and adults’ bodies in performance and taking seriously children’s cultures and experiences, Beyond Innocence asks what strategies contemporary performance has to offer both children and adults in order to foster shared spaces for social and political change. As such, the book develops an approach to analysing performance that not only recognises children as makers of meaning but also as historically, politically, and culturally situated subjects and bodies with lived experiences that far exceed the familiar narratives of innocence and inexperience that children often have to bear.

On a global platform we are witnessing the increased visibility of the people we call children and teenagers as political activists. Meanwhile, across the contemporary performance landscape, children are participating as performers and collaborators in ways that resonate with this figure of the child activist. Beyond Innocence: Children in Performance proposes that performance has the ability to offer alternatives to hegemonic perceptions of the child as innocent, in need of protection, and apolitical. Through an in-depth analysis of selected performances shown in the UK within the past decade, alongside newly gathered documentation on children’s participation in professional performance in their own words, this book considers how performance might offer more capacious representations of and encounters with children beyond the nostalgic and protective adult gaze elicited within mainstream contexts. Motivated by recent collaborations with children on stage that reimagine the figure of the child, the book offers a new approach to both reading age in performance and also doing research with children rather than on or about them. By redressing the current imbalance between the way that we read children and adults’ bodies in performance and taking seriously children’s cultures and experiences, Beyond Innocence asks what strategies contemporary performance has to offer both children and adults in order to foster shared spaces for social and political change. As such, the book develops an approach to analysing performance that not only recognises children as makers of meaning but also as historically, politically, and culturally situated subjects and bodies with lived experiences that far exceed the familiar narratives of innocence and inexperience that children often have to bear.