The Swedish director Suzanne Osten is a pioneer of great importance for child culture and children’s rights in Scandinavia. Ever since 1968, she has directed norm-breaking theatre plays of high artistic quality for young audiences. She has also directed two children’s films, Carmen’s Revenge (1996) and The Girl, the Mother, and the Demons (2016), both of which were initially banned for audience members under 15 years of age by the Swedish Media Council. This chapter focuses on these films but also on the intense debates following them, since these debates reflect society’s conflicting notions on childhood in an interesting manner. Not least, the debates reveal important issues about the complex balance between on the one hand children’s rights to experience art and on the other hand their need for protection.

In addition, the chapter proceeds from so-called reception studies that has a long tradition within the research field of children’s theatre studies in Sweden but is largely unexplored within cinema studies. Children themselves have claimed that Osten’s films are interesting and important, and drawing upon these viewpoints, the chapter also discusses the sometimes striking differences between children’s and adults’ notions of child culture. In conclusion, the chapter argues for the importance of giving children the chance, ideally together with adults, to experience art that portrays complex subjects.

Children in plays, on the stage and in the audience Children’s theatre is a reflection of contemporary views on children and childhood. Adults and parents, as well as playwrights, actors, directors, pedagogues, and critics dictate the underlying purposes of theatre for the youngest audiences. Traditionally, the adult world has insisted on a theatre that serves either serves a purpose or entertains, and preferably does both. During the first decades of the twentieth century Swedish theatres produced new plays written by pioneering playwrights, such as Anna Maria Roos, Anna Wahlenberg and Walter Stenström. Sometimes the cast was mixed with both adults and children. Children were created in the plays, they were present in the auditorium and sometimes also on the stage. In some typical performances, children are found in opposition to the grown-ups within different social environments and contexts, from fairy tale castles to poverty. Childhood embraces conflicts and challenges and the children represent courage, common sense, faithfulness and love. The critics often praise the frank and charming child actors, but have problems with the valuations of theatre for a young audience. This chapter analyses shifting representations and functions of children and childhood in the works of Roos, Wahlenberg, and Stenström. The focus of the study is on plays themselves, as well as reviews and other archival source material.