Nellie McCaslin, who died February 28 at age 90, was among the foremost authorities on children’s theater.

A professor at New York University, where she for many years was associate dean of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, McCaslin published “Theater for Children in the United States: A History” (1971) and “Creative Drama in the Classroom and Beyond,” the latter a widely assigned textbook soon to be released in its eighth edition.

She also published numerous original plays and collections of myths and legends.

McCaslin was a native of Cleveland. After completing a master’s degree at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve) and a brief stint at Tudor Hall in Indianapolis, she went to work as head of the drama department at the National College of Education in Evanston, Ill.

Among the courses McCaslin taught prospective teachers was one on producing radio programs. She viewed radio as a weapon in the effort to inoculate children against becoming couch potatoes.

“A teacher has no better weapon for competing with undesirable programs on radio and television than to help children understand what goes into making a program,” McCaslin told the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1950. “Children like to be spectators but it is much more satisfying to them to be participants.”

After moving to New York, McCaslin received a Ph.D. in 1957 and taught at Mills College of Education, Columbia Teacher’s College, and finally NYU. She was a longtime advocate of quality in children’s education, and in 1962 decried the increase in slapstick in children’s shows on Broadway. “Where are the quiet moments?” she asked the New York Times.

Among McCaslin’s areas of expertise were the multifarious ways that drama was used as a classroom tool and in therapeutic settings. “Primitive societies cast out demons through dance and mime. Aristotle wrote of the cathartic effect of plays on audiences. Children play out their experiences and problems,” she wrote in 1990, when the fifth edition of “Creative Drama” was published.

McCaslin traced the history of children’s theater in America to the founding of the Educational Alliance, a settlement house theater on the Lower East Side. For many years, she noted, children’s theater was mainly the province of social workers and amateurs, with an overabundance of fuzzy costumes. She was heartened by the increase in professionalism. “There are fewer children’s theaters than there were 40 years ago,” she said in 2003. “But they’re much stronger and presenting better material.”

McCaslin traveled internationally to give demonstrations for teachers, and occasionally acted herself. In 2003, she and a friend, the former chairwoman of the department of theater and film at Hunter College, Vera Mowry Roberts, appeared as wizards in a Bible-based production at a dinner theater in Roanoke, Va. Cast as the heavies, Mc-Caslin and Ms. Roberts enthusiastically threw a holy man to the lions and cast spells. “We prance,” McCaslin told a local reporter.

She stayed active until the end, and had addressed audiences in Japan and Israel in recent months, Ms. Roberts said. On the day she died, she was scheduled to appear in a student production at NYU.

Nellie McCaslin

Born August 20, 1914; died February 28 at St. Vincent’s Medical Center after undergoing a heart operation; she never married and is survived by a niece, Alexandra Plotkin.