Barbara McIntyre Papers

Barbara McIntyre, university professor, speech and hearing specialist, and author, was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1916. After taking classes at the University of Saskatchewan, she began teaching in Moose Jaw in 1938 in a one room school with eleven students enrolled in grades one through nine. She used story dramatization as a teaching technique and even used the horses the students' rode to school in recreating stories of chivalry.

She studied with Dr. Kenneth Graham and earned her M.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1950. Her thesis title was, A Preliminary Study and Evaluation of Suitable Stories for Creative Dramatics. For seven summers from 1948 through 1954, no matter where she was, she worked for Director Dina Rees Evans at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, a 2,000-seat outdoor summer theatre. McIntyre taught creative drama, puppetry and Shakespeare as part of the Creative Playshop and Youtheatre, a six-week theatre school with twelve teachers and 300 children.

As a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Barbara shared a job with the Children's Theater of Pittsburgh and the Pitt Speech Department. This enabled her to develop a teacher education program where the college students could be involved with children from the first week of classes. When the Speech Department started sending children with hearing and speech problems to her classes, she realized the therapeutic value of creative drama. Her chairman encouraged her to go back to school and get a doctorate degree in speech and hearing. She studied with Eleanor Irwin, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, who promoted the use of creative drama in drama therapy. McIntyre received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1957. The title of her dissertation was, The Effect of a Program of Creative Activities Upon the Consonant Articulation Skills of Adolescent and Pre-Adolescent Children with Speech Disorders.

McIntyre served as an Associate Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois from 1966 until 1971, assuming the position vacated by Rita Criste when she retired. She taught creative drama and children's theatre to university students and theatre in Evanston's School District 65. During these years fellow professor Ann Thurman and McIntyre sponsored visits from Dorothy Heathcote, famed British drama in education specialist. On one of these residencies, four films were made of Heathcote's unique teaching methods for distribution to the field.

In 1971 McIntyre returned to Canada and become Chair of the Theatre Department at the University of Victoria. She retired in 1983, but stayed active in the Alumni Association. McIntyre passed away on June 9, 2005 in Victoria, Canada. On the day she died the flag flew at half-mast at the University in her honor.

Barbara was instrumental in the beginning of ASSITEJ, the International Association of Theatre for Youth. She was part of the United States delegation at the first international children's theatre meeting in London, England called by Gerald Tyler in 1964, which lead to ASSITEJ's creation. She also served as the President from 1967-1968 and the Program Chair of the 1963 Convention of CTC (now known as AATE, the American Alliance for Theatre & Education). Her awards include: the Creative Drama Award for Human Awareness from CTAA, 1983, and the Children's Theatre Foundation of America National Mentor of Theatre for Children/Youth Medallion, 2002. Barbara authored numerous articles in theatre for youth and education journals and the following books: Creative Drama in the Elementary School (1974), Informal Dramatics: A Language Arts Activity for the Special Pupil (1963), and a Sourcebook of Selected Materials for Early Childhood Education in the Arts (1969). She also co-authored the following sound recordings: with Edna M. Wilcox Listening with Mr. Bunny Big Ears (1965), six recordings with a program in language development and speech improvement for elementary school children; and with Edna M. Wilcox and Eleanor C. Irwin, Countdown for Listening.