Children’s theatre occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of art and communication. Unlike screen-based media, theatre is grounded in the simultaneous physical presence of performers and spectators, making communication immediate, embodied, and responsive. Meaning is produced not only through verbal language but also through acting, movement, visual and auditory signs, spatial arrangements, rhythm, and audience responses. These features are especially important in theatre for children, where communication is closely tied to sensory perception, imagination, emotion, and participation. Given the role of media in children’s socialization and the formation of cultural meanings, children’s theatre can provide a setting in which ideas associated with national identity are encountered through lived experience. Nevertheless, existing research has generally examined children’s theatre, media communication, cultural education, and national identity as separate areas of inquiry. Less attention has been paid to the way communicative elements of children’s theatre are organized and related to one another in presenting and shaping national identity. This study therefore aimed to develop a conceptual model of the communicative elements of children’s theatre, drawing on the medium-specific characteristics of theatre and focusing on children aged 6 to 12. The study employed an applied, exploratory qualitative design in two sequential stages. In the first stage, 30 children aged 6–12 who had attended children’s theatre performances in District 4 of Mashhad and District 1 of Tehran between November 2021 and March 2024 were selected through purposive, criterion-based sampling. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and observation. Questions were adapted to the children’s developmental level and concerned concrete aspects of their theatrical experience, including characters, stories, symbols, music, rituals, and performance elements, rather than asking directly about the abstract notion of national identity. The data were analyzed thematically, while frequencies were used only to indicate recurring themes and not as quantitative measures. The second stage involved semi-structured interviews with 11 academics, researchers, managers, and professionals in theatre, children’s theatre, media, and communication. Participants were selected through purposive and theoretical sampling, and interviews continued until theoretical saturation. The data were analyzed using Strauss and Corbin’s grounded theory through open, axial, and selective coding, constant comparison, and theoretical memoing. Credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability were supported through participant review, comparison of interview and observational evidence, peer review, attention to discrepant cases, and documentation of analytical decisions. The findings indicate that children encounter national identity in theatre less as an abstract set of ideas than through concrete, emotionally engaging experiences. National symbols, music and songs, historical references, rituals, cultural heritage, Iranian narratives, and national figures emerged as important identity-related elements. Their significance, however, depended on how they were integrated into dramatic action and expressed through performance. Acting, movement, voice, costume, colour, stage design, rhythm, and music helped transform cultural references into experiences that children could perceive, interpret, and respond to. The final model comprises eight interconnected communicative components: a multilayered production source, a multi-coded message, simultaneous communication channels, a participatory child audience, performance context, live feedback, the broader social environment, and communicative discourse formation. The theatrical message is shaped collectively by playwrights, directors, actors, designers, educators, and cultural or institutional actors rather than by a single sender. At the same time, children participate through emotional, verbal, bodily, and imaginative responses. Live feedback and the shared performance environment make the process reciprocal and sensitive to context. The model further identifies causal conditions, educational and managerial strategies, contextual and intervening conditions, and communicative consequences. The main contribution of the study lies in explaining the relationships among these elements rather than simply listing them. The proposed model moves beyond a linear conception of communication in which predetermined identity messages are transmitted to passive recipients. Instead, it presents children’s theatre as a dynamic communicative environment in which identity-related meanings are encountered, interpreted, and experienced through the interaction of production actors, performance codes, medium-specific characteristics, and child participation. The findings suggest that theatre’s contribution to national identity does not depend merely on including cultural content; it also depends on how that content is selected, embodied, performed, perceived, and situated within its cultural and institutional context. The study does not claim that theatrical exposure automatically produces or guarantees national identity. Rather, it identifies the communicative mechanisms and conditions through which children’s theatre may contribute to this process. In this respect, the model extends conventional linear approaches by bringing liveness, embodied presence, multimodal signification, immediate feedback, audience participation, and the social context of performance into a single framework. It also provides a basis for designing identity-oriented children’s theatre, strengthening practitioner training, developing educational programs, and informing cultural policies concerned with children’s engagement with shared cultural narratives, symbols, heritage, and belonging. These implications are particularly relevant to educational and cultural settings where theatre is expected to engage children with cultural heritage without reducing artistic communication to direct instruction, ideological messaging, or predetermined meanings.