Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

"If It's Not Right, You Have To Put It Right": The Play And Work Of Children In Matilda The Musical, Kristin Perkins

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Perkins considers issues of subversive theatrical criticism and exploitative child labor as they combine in Matilda the Musical, examining the performances as a holistic, if ambivalent, production. In a play where the lead figure is a little girl, this essay uses the lens of gender and age to provide context for the revolutionary character of Matilda in a female-dominated play that critiques established norms, at the same time that the play is produced in, and by, a system that reproduces troubling power structures.