A new Toy Theatre

In 2020 the only way that you can experience a live theatrical performance with a large cast and lots of changes of scene is if you are lucky enough to have a Toy Theatre in your home. With this in mind we have produced a brand new Toy Theatre, based on traditional designs, which you can down load here. It uses A4 size scenery and can be built using materials many people will already have in their home, so it suits the present time very well.

The “Grand Theatre” also has a new booklet to help you build it. The 33 pages also include lots of special effect techniques that can be used for any Toy Theatre. If you are very clever you can set up your printer to print it as an A5 page size booklet.

STAGE FRONT

HOW TO BUILD THE GRAND THEATRE

What are Toy Theatres?

A Toy Theatre is a miniature stage, built in card or wood and brightly coloured. Children perform plays on it using characters and scenes cut out from printed sheets and text written in a simple “playbook”. The audience would normally be family and friends and the auditorium the front room. Adults too are known to use them, especially the large elaborate versions published in Germany and Denmark.

As well as being a flexible means of expression, the sheets represent a vibrant folk art derived from the full size theatre. It is a unique record of real plays and stage presentations, particularly of the nineteenth century. Many enthusiasts collect and study old sheets for this reason.