Junior Programs, Inc. Taught Kids About Democracy and Racial Equity. Can It Teach Us to Use TYA to Build a Better Future for the United States?

Given the massive federal funding cuts to the arts in the United States it’s no surprise that many theatres devoted to theatre for young audiences (TYA) are struggling to figure out how best to sustain the important work of helping young audiences make sense of our increasingly complicated world. However, Heather Cox Richardson, American historian and writer of the popular Substack Letters from an American, suggests, paradoxically, that one way forward is to look back. In her 7 December 2023 newsletter, she recounts how a belief in racial equality, although imperfectly implemented, helped the United States defeat fascism during World War II. She suggests, in essence, that we’ve been here before, and asks: What can we learn from our history that could help us figure out what to do now?

Indeed, in many ways, we have been here before. In the mid-1930s, as the country struggled to emerge from the Great Depression, American fascism and isolationism were on the rise. Racism was blatant, reenforced daily by Hollywood stereotypes. Then, as now, anti-immigration sentiments were high: Multiple waves of immigration had created over-crowded urban tenements with a population whose languages and customs differed markedly from those of the white, Western European-based American culture. To address these conditions, settlement houses across the country sought interventions to help assimilate immigrants as quickly as possible. One especially popular approach was the use of amateur theatricals, especially those with and for children.

Until that time, theatres specifically for children were few and far between. As part of Franklin Delano Rosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was created to put theatre professionals back to work. Among FTP’s eclectic array of productions, their popular Living Newspapers focused on dramas highlighting issues related to the dark underbelly of capitalism, and one production for children, Revolt of the Beavers, was accused of teaching communism. Unsurprisingly, just as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are currently being targeted and defunded, the Dies Commission, a congressional committee charged with investigating subversive activities, summarily cancelled FTP’s funding in 1938.

Nevertheless, the idea of theatre focused on young audiences was in the air. In 1936, a group of community-minded mothers in New Jersey, led by executive director Dorothy L. McFadden and artistic director Saul Lancourt, decided that American youth of all classes and backgrounds deserved more than amateur productions. Together, they created Junior Programs, Inc., one of the first national touring companies offering high quality professional productions of operas, plays, and ballets specifically designed for the developmental needs of a youthful audience. I detail their heretofore untold story in More Than Entertainment: Democracy and the Performing Arts –– Junior Programs, Inc. (1936 - 1943) Pioneers of Theater for Young Audiences. Inspired by a credo expressing a belief that the performing arts were an essential part of preparing the next generation for their role as active citizens in a democracy, they developed a novel organizational model, one still remarkably relevant today.

Children and parents flocked to Junior Programs productions because they were fun, but they continued to come because Junior Programs offered a vision of a brighter, more inclusive, and appealing future.

Their credo included the following:

Believing that all arts spring from the people and flourish best in a democracy… we believe that all American children, regardless of race, creed, or social or economic status, should have the benefit of inspiration by the finest professional artists… to guide them toward democratic ideals; [and] we believe that the artistry of all races and nationalities, undistorted by bigoty and hate… should be available to all children.

With democracy as the lens through which they viewed their choices, they created a company with a healthy disregard for the way things had always been done. Instead, they focused on seeking out opportunities to translate their vision into reality. Artistic innovation to meet the specific developmental needs of young audiences was a given. Entertainment was a given. But there were three additional, interdependent innovations that contributed to their continuous and growing success. First, they organized a nationwide network of local volunteer “sponsoring committees” responsible for doing the administrative work. Second, they commissioned a series of plays exploring the inherent values in a democracy of racial and ethnic equity, respect for diversity, and the need for inclusion. Finally, they recognized that instilling these democratic values would require more than entertaining productions; and that “more” was supplied by a network of partnerships with both national institutions of higher education and local K-12 public schools in the communities in which they performed. While the partnerships were key, their real innovation, and the one that wove the performing arts into the fabric of a community’s daily life, was their decision to provide local frontline teachers with curriculum materials related to a play’s theme, not only for the performing arts, but for all K-12 subjects.

Children and parents flocked to Junior Programs productions because they were fun, but they continued to come because Junior Programs offered a vision of a brighter, more inclusive, and appealing future. Junior Programs emphasized the positives of democracy, its aspirations and potential. Their productions highlighted the joy, excitement, and fun found in a diversity of races and ethnicities. The Junior Programs model created not only a vast new audience, but a vast array of allies—allies deeply invested in the organization’s success because they saw it as their success.

Influenced by John Dewey, an early twentieth century American philosopher whose ideas focused on learning as a lifelong communal and experiential process, Junior Programs created educational partnerships that used each production as a catalyst for a suite of related curriculum units and activities delivered by frontline teachers in subjects reaching far beyond the traditional arts. There were, of course, materials for drama, music, and dance, but there were also grade appropriate cross-disciplinary units related to a play’s theme for history, social studies, economics, literature, and political science, as well as for physical education, shop, and home economics. Teachers received their unit three months ahead of the performance; thus, by the time the production arrived, the young audience had been deeply immersed in a multi-faceted educational experience that explored the larger interrelated themes raised by the production. In essence, the production served to unite the various disciplines into an organic whole.

A few examples provide a sense of the comprehensiveness of their educational vision and how it wove the company and the performing arts deeply into the day-to-day life of a community without, by the way, ever using the label “DEI.”

• To challenge pervasive negative stereotypes, Reward of the Sun God, a story of two Hopi children, provided a social studies unit on Native American social organization, foundational myths, and details about daily life. For science, there were readings on Native Americans’ relationships to the natural environment, and the play itself hinged on a depiction of the deeply communal responsibilities of Hopi religious practices. For physical education, there were instructions for Native American games, and home economics received patterns for Native American clothing. It is worth noting that although the play depicted Hopi kachinas (spirit beings) and featured costumes specific to the Hopi tribe, the curriculum sometimes included a more general view of Native American cultures and practices. Some of their curricular choices may not have met the more sophisticated assessments of authenticity that we champion today, but in their time, they effectively countered negative, “othering” stereotypes about Native Americans.
• Undeterred by the then "hot button" racial issues, the history unit for The Emperor’s Treasure Chest, a rollicking tale of Brazilian children engaged in tracking down a hidden treasure, included questions comparing Brazilian and American forms of slavery. The economics class curriculum focused on an exploration of Brazil’s natural resources and its place in the world economic order, and music classes provided sheet music and records of Brazilian music and dance.
• The Adventures of Marco Polo offered a comprehensive curriculum unit on the thirteenth century, featuring units on the cultures, art, history, and politics of Italy, Persia, India, and China. Science classes focused on Chinese scientific discoveries, and shop offered a blueprint for building a model of a Chinese junk.

These materials, and the three plays themselves, created “restorative narratives” that turned negative racial stereotypes upside down. Junior Programs understood that the antidote to the polarizing, fear-inducing “othering” of communities of color was to show the strengths and contributions made by the immigrant and Indigenous communities. The plays were all about kids you’d like to have as your neighbor next door.

Another play, Doodle Dandy of the U.S.A., took on the question, “How do you teach children about democracy?” It supplied history units on the Founding Fathers, the Bill of Rights, and freedom of the press. For social studies, there were Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, with extensive materials on the growth of democracy; and for music class, lyrics and sheet music for early American ballads and patriotic tunes. Doodle Dandy also made manifest another Junior Programs core belief: that children have agency. Through a mix of fantasy and reality, the story centered high school students working together to save their town from the clutches of a would-be dictator. The play had the youthful audience on the edge of their seats, cheering for democracy the way they would for their favorite sports team.

The final element of the unique Junior Programs model was their highly decentralized organizational infrastructure. If you wanted a Junior Programs production to come to your city or town, you had to create a local Sponsoring Committee. These committees were composed of volunteer leaders from all parts of the community: Junior League women were major players, but there were local businessmen, civic associations such as Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, the parent-teacher associations, college and glee clubs, and dance studios. There were superintendents of schools, social service agencies focused on children, and chambers of commerce.

This was community engagement of an entirely different sort than we have today, and it created a sense of real ownership.

Professionally developed marketing materials were supplied by Junior Programs, but the truly innovative feature of this committee was that it was responsible not only for raising the money, but for doing all the local administrative tasks––from securing an appropriate venue, recruiting stagehands and ushers, and selling tickets to the full range of marketing and public relations activities. Public relations might include a local bakery displaying and selling gingerbread house cookies when Junior Programs performed Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. A clothing store might create a window display of Russian costumes for Rimsky Korsakov’s The Bumble Bee Prince, and when the ballet company performed Robin Hood, a sporting goods store featured archery equipment. The committee arranged for buses to transport the children to and from the auditorium, the local police were enlisted to direct traffic, and local newspapers, in addition to reviewing the performances, ran picture coloring contests, stories, and photographs related to the productions. Efficiently seating thousands of children, collecting candy wrappers, arranging for trips to the toilets, and making sure no child was left behind when the performance was over were also part of their responsibilities. This was community engagement of an entirely different sort than we have today, and it created a sense of real ownership—Junior Programs was their company, and there were seldom empty seats at any of their performance.

With the United States entry into World War II, Junior Programs came to an untimely end. Their performers were being drafted, and the rationing of gas and rubber made touring impossible. But the model responsible for their success was based on principles that still resonate today. First, there is their vision. By connecting the company explicitly to sustaining democracy, Junior Programs essentially reframed the purpose of the performing arts for children, from primarily entertainment to becoming a catalyst and key player in our national purpose—growing, sustaining, and preserving our democracy. Given today’s political reality, it is no stretch to say there is no more important purpose than being a player in teaching the nation’s next generation about the value of democracy.

Second, such a shift in purpose made it easier to inspire and attract a much broader group of stakeholders and activists as allies, and resources—and their substantial partnerships with both educators and the communities brought an eclectic array of people into their orbit on an almost daily basis. With educators, they were able to create powerful partnership by using drama, music, and dance to bring alive and connect subjects as disparate as history, social studies, home economics, science, and physical education. In terms of community partnerships, Junior Programs was always “invited in” by the community because the company was able to continuously meet a need defined by the community. This created a sense of community ownership that brought with it an unusual stability, with communities contracting for multiple productions season after season. Clearly, understanding what a community wants and needs becomes an important factor in sustainability in today’s environment. It also may require additional partnerships with experienced community organizers and social justice advocates, bringing even more stakeholders and allies into TYA’s orbit.

In today’s context, the vast pool of Junior League volunteers available to Junior Programs no longer exists, but what their model demonstrated was that for the right mission, large numbers of people were willing to make and sustain significant commitments of time to ensure success. Today, there are other pools of volunteers who could be tapped. Rather than eliminating vital programs due to cuts in federal funding, would it not make sense to explore the growing pool of highly skilled retirees, for example, many of whom would love to volunteer as more than ushers?

Perhaps it’s time for adult theatres to make a serious investment in their future audience by pooling and sharing resources with TYA.

By positioning themselves as key players in the preservation of democracy, Junior Programs also made themselves a key player in the development of the adult theatre’s future audience. This suggests that adult theatres are also potential TYA partners. Adult theatre audiences are aging out at a rapid pace, and for many, audience development has not received much attention. Perhaps it’s time for adult theatres to make a serious investment in their future audience by pooling and sharing resources with TYA.

To paraphrase language from “Theatre Makers as Movement Builders,” Junior Programs was an early example of how to successfully use the performing arts as a catalyst to foster social cohesion with a values-driven, creative, and collective purpose—and in that process, they became not only masterful storytellers, but “architects of belonging, creating a world that did not yet exist.” Their many years of success after success clearly demonstrates the false choice between making art and making a difference.

In today’s chaotic environment, there is a natural human longing to quickly find a place of safety or a recipe that seems to promise a firm footing. But there is no safe place now! Junior Programs succeeded by inventing a recipe—one that ultimately contributed to the birth of the field of TYA. They did this by anchoring themselves in core principles as articulated in their credo, by ignoring traditional boundaries, and by actively seeking allies and opportunities in the chaos of their times. Our current crisis has cracked open the status quo—providing a real opportunity for new things to grow. How can TYA turn this opportunity to its advantage?