Charlotte Chorpenning

Chorpenning, Charlotte (1873–1955), playwright. One of America's pioneers in children's theatre, Chorpenning wrote plays and laid down guidelines for theatre that used children as spectators and participants. She was long associated with the Goodman Theatre where she directed many of her scripts and sponsored other writers in the field. Today the American Alliance for Theatre and Education gives the Charlotte Chorpenning Cup to an outstanding children's theatre writer each year.

Chorpenning, Charlotte (1872–1955), American playwright, theorist, and teacher, who was at the forefront of school and community drama programmes across the country. Chorpenning studied playwriting at Radcliffe College, and from about 1915 to 1919 she was a playwright in residence for several Winona, Minnesota organizations, helping them write issue‐based plays. From 1932 to 1951 Chorpenning wrote and directed most of the plays for the Children's Theatre at the Goodman Theatre of the Art Institute of Chicago, many of which were based on popular fairy tales like The Emperor's New Clothes (1932), Jack and the Beanstalk (1937), Cinderella (1940), Little Red Riding Hood, or Grandmother Slyboots (1943), and Rumpelstiltskin, to name a few. In her plays, Chorpenning often complemented the fairy‐tale character with an older but wiser double of her own invention (the Old Wolf in Red Riding Hood, Mother Hulda in Rumpelstiltskin), a device which draws out character motivation and encourages the audience to reflect on the action of the play.

— Anne Duggan