Charlotte Barrows Chorpenning Collection

Charlotte Barrows Chorpenning, theatre for young audiences playwright, stage director, researcher and educator was born in 1872. She was educated at Iowa Agricultural College and Cornell University, from which she received a Bachelor of Letters degree in 1894. Following graduation she taught high school in Springfield, Ohio and Denver, Colorado and English at the Normal School in Winona, Minnesota.

After writing her first play, Between the Lines in 1912, Chorpenning was accepted into George Pierce Baker's playwriting class at Harvard (Radcliffe College) in anticipation of a career as a playwright for adults. When Chorpenning returned to teaching at Winona she served as a playwright-in-residence for community theatres in the area. Her article, Putting on a Community Play in the Quarterly Journal of Speech Education in 1919, led to her national prominence and requests for her services throughout the United States.

In 1921, Neva Boyd invited Chorpenning to present a workshop at the Recreation Training School in Chicago. She was offered a position on this school's faculty and accepted. She taught classes and supervised students work in the local settlement houses until 1927, when the school merged with the sociology department at Northwestern University. Chorpenning joined Northwestern's School of Speech as an instructor of dramatics and worked with recreational drama and on university theatre productions.

Her office-mate was Winifred Ward, head of the children's theatre program, and Chorpenning served as an advisor to her and the Children's Theatre of Evanston. In 1928 Ward consulted her regarding some rewrites for the December 1928 production of The Wizard of Oz. Following the success of this production, the theatre produced the following Chorpenning plays: The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Vagabond and The King's Ears.

In the spring of 1932, Maurice Gnesin, head of the Goodman Theatre part of the Chicago Art Institute, offered Chorpenning the job of Director of the Goodman Children's Theatre. At the age of 60, Chorpenning accepted. She continued in this job until 1952 and during that time wrote and directed most of the productions for children. She also became interested in analyzing audience responses to plays and trained observers to collect data.

Chorpenning wrote at least 55 children's plays, many of which were published by Coach House Press, Samuel French, Children's Theatre Press (later named Anchorage Press) and Dramatists' Play Service. She collaborated on the following plays: The Elves and the Shoemaker (with Nora MacAlvay, 1946), Little Lee Bobo (with Rose Hum Lee, 1948), Flibbertygibbet (with Nora MacAlvay, 1952), The Magic Horn (with Ann Nicholson, 1955) and Juan and the Magic Fruit (with Juan Edades).

In 1953 her only book, Twenty-One Years with Children's Theatre, was published by the Children's Theatre Press. Chorpenning died on January 7, 1955.