Stories of initiation: the Children's Festival of the Women's Socialist Center and the Angelina Pagano Children's Theater Company

Abstract

The article aims to inquire in the periodical press an area of entertainment linked to childhood during the 1920 decade. The cases of the Children's Festival organized by the Women's Socialist Center in the Japanese Park to celebrate Labor day and the creation of the Children's Theater Company of the actress Angelina Pagano allows an approach to a form of entertainment that was extremely successful in the period associated with the idea of fantasy. This particular aesthetic code deliberately distanced itself from a type of realistic representation and in that distance looked forward to capture the attention of a challenging public due to its restless quality and its tendency to distraction. The proposal in this work consists of reflecting the different reasons that led to the confluence in the same aesthetic matrix of cultural events promoted by left-wing political groups and agents of the commercial theater scene.