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Muriel Sharon Remembered, A News Item by Margaret Gruen
I have created a website to honor and remember Muriel Sharon, who was the seminal person in children’s theatre in America.
Muriel was the Chairman of the Children’s Acting Department of the 92nd Street YM-YWHA from 1947 – 1974. She was the Artistic Director of the Junior Program at The Neighborhood Playhouse, taught child drama at Cornell University and Ithaca College and was the founder of The Pocket Players, Inc., a theater company that toured New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and eastern Pennsylvania with adult and child actors.
She produced plays that could rival any Broadway or regional theater with costumes that were works of art, as memorable to the child actors as much as the plays themselves, props that were as hilarious as they were true and scenery that popped out of the world of 3-dimensional Victorian postcards.
When I realized that Muriel did not have a digital footprint, I decided to right that wrong and spent over 4 years interviewing her former students, researching her collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Library and documenting her artistic life from her early years until her death with dates, photographs and archival material; all of which was sorted and organized into a narrative that told her story in a visually seductive way.
It is with great delight that I present to you www.murielsharonremembered.com
Margaret Gruen, January 12, 2020