Five Plays from the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis was first published in

Among the notable productions of the Children's Theatre Company of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, a leading exponent of children's theater in this country, have been plays that are adaptations of classics in children's literature. This volume makes available the scripts of five of these adaptations, along with illuminating information about the productions and the company itself.

The plays include two adaptations by Frederick Gaines, two by Timothy Mason, and one by Richard Shaw. Mr. Gaines's plays are based on Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.One of Mr. Mason's plays, Kidnapped in London, is an adaptation of part of Master Skylark by John Bennett, and the other, Robin Hood: A Story of the Forest, is based on part of the Robin Hood legend. Mr. Shaw's play is an adaptation in Kabuki form of the Grimms' fairy tale Sleeping Beauty.

Linda Walsh Jenkins writes a general introduction and commentary. Background information about each play includes excerpts from discussions among directors, composers, designers, and playwrights about the plays themselves and about various phases of the development of the productions. Highlights of the history of the Children's Theatre Company and of the aims and accomplishments of its director, John Clark Donahue, are given, and these will be of particular interest to anyone in the children's theater field.

The photographic illustrations, which include a number in color, show various aspects of Children's Theatre Company productions. There are also musical examples from the original scores for the plays.

Renunciation as a Tragic Focus was first published in 1954. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Norman J. DeWitt explains, in an introduction to this volume, that these essays are written in terms of a personal humanism.

"Personal humanism," Mr. DeWitt says, "comes from an awareness of a world in which pain is real, and it leads to the traditional virtues of wisdom and justice, terms that are seldom heard in academic circles today."

Traditionalist though he may be in the basic virtues, Professor Falk, in these studies, challenges a traditional concept. By analyzing the conflicting values in five plays, he demonstrates why the traditional definition of tragedy should be broadened. He shows that martyrdom and self-sacrifice, when they involve an act of renunciation, should be included in the realm of tragedy. The older concept ruled out these elements by its insistence that the death of a martyr is not the defeat but the victory of an individual.

The five plays studied here are Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Antigone,Corneille's Polyeucte,Maeterlinck's Aglavaine and Selysette,and Samain's Polypheme.In all of them, the tragic experience of man's defeat in an unequal struggle against destiny is examined in the light of the conflict between his worldly and his spiritual aspirations. The plays illustrate the tenet that renunciation becomes a tragic experience only if the character's devotion to both worldly and spiritual values is genuine. In succession, the five plays represent a progression from authentic to seeming renunciation.

The studies are pertinent to many interests in the broad academic field of the humanities as well as to such specific disciplines as comparative literature, drama, French literature, and the classics.