In the past, British children were frequently encouraged to try out their performing skills for the benefit of adults. They did this by reading aloud, acting or a musical instrument. As they up they were taken to public places of entertainment – the theatre, opera, circus or ballet. They looked forward to these occasions with great and would remember and discuss what they had seen for many weeks afterwards. But nowadays television and computers an endless stream of easily entertainment and children quickly accept these marvellous inventions as a very ordinary part of their everyday lives. For many children, the sense of witnessing a very live performance is gone forever.
But all is not lost. The presence of a TV set may have encouraged a very lazy response from in their own homes, but the desire of those with ambitions to become performing artists themselves does not seem to have been at all diminished, and live performances in public are still relatively , albeit with an older, more specialist audience.