Our latest product is a Toy Theatre kit for building a Webb Toy Theatre complete with the play “The Brigand’s Son” as published by Mathews. The kit uses full colour cardboard pages, double sided prints to make a replica of the Mathew’s playbook, an Andrews drop curtain and full easy to follow instructions with photographs.
The “printing details” give instructions how to print the pages on card and paper. Please note that they are A3 size, so if you cannot print that big then forward the files to a copy shop with suitable instructions. Note also that the margins need to be set so as to print up to the paper edge.
As always our downloads are copyright but you are free to use them for personal or educational use provided they are not sold commercially.
The City of London has kindly made a pop-up shop available to the Pollock’s Toy Museum Trust this Christmas (2023). It is situated at 33 Leadenhall Market, London EC3V 1LR. It is currently open 1100-1600 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. pop in to get those last minute Toy Theatre themed gifts!
A new magazine “European Paper Theatre” has been in publication since 2022. all issues are available to download FREE on https://www.grafisk-werk.dk/ept.html. You can also register to have a link sent to you each time a new issue is published.
The articles include news about what is going on in the Toy Theatre world, information about performances and festivals as well as informative historical material, ENJOY!
Joseph Parks of Saltburn-on-Sea published the magazine “Vanity fair” from 1917 to 1927. It then became the “Collector’s Miscellany” from 1928 until 1953. It was a publication for collectors of all sorts of things, including Toy Theatre. It had articles by George Speaight and others. The information is not always accurate but it has period interest and some of it does not appear elsewhere. A lot of the issues have been scanned and can be viewed for free on http://www.friardale.co.uk.
The following is a list of the main items related to Toy Theatre that appear in the issues currently available:
VANITY FAIR
Vol.2 issue 16, November 1925. “March’s Theatre”, Frank Jay.
Vol.2 issue 18, January 1926, “March’s Mother Goose”, Edward Herdman.
Vol.3 issue 28, December 1926, Daily mirror photo of Benjamin Pollock in his shop.
COLLECTOR’S MISCELLANY
Vol.1 issue 6. February 1929. “Juvenile Theatre its History and Development” part2. Frank Jay.
Vol.1 April-May 1932, Letter “Juvenile Drama”, FS
New series:
No.1 November-December 1932. “Plays in Packets” , E.Percival.
No.9. May-September 1934 “The Plays of Hodgson 1822-1834”, M.W.Stone.
No.10 March 1935 “J.K.Green (1808?) 1811”, M.W.Stone.
No.13 October 1935 “Price of sheets 1811-1935”, G.Speaight.
No.14 December 1935 “Juvenile Theatre”, Gerald Morice.
No.15 August 1936 “Practical performances on the Toy Theatre”, G.Speaight.
No.16 October 1936 “The Juvenile Drama Abroad”, Gerald Morice.
No.17 December 1936 ditto part 2.
No.18 February-May 1937. Front cover shows first page of the first issue (1870) of the “Boy’s Halfpenny Weekly Budget of Plays, Stories, Characters and Scenes”, which included 2 free plates of “Timour the Tartar”.
No.22 August-December 1938 “The Toy Theatre”, Gerald Morice.
No.24.January-June 1939 “Side Lines of Toy Theatre Publishers”, G.Speaight.
Fourth series:
No.2 Winter 1941 “Same scene but different play” , Charles Williams
No.3. February 1942 “About Webb’s Plays”, Charles Williams.
No.4. July 1942 “Some Mathew Revivals”, Charles Williams.
No.5. Undated. “Revivals of Andrews & Co.”, Charles Williams.
Another excellent book by David Powell is now available from Pollock’s Toy Museum Trust. It is an in depth analysis of the essay, “A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured” which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote and which made Toy Theatre famous in literary circles.
The book goes into a lot of detail about the story behind the essay, Stevenson’s fall out with William Webb. and the sources of the many references that he made.
Stevenson was really only interested in plays about pirates and highwaymen and there is no doubt that his famous book, “Treasure Island”, was very much influenced by the Toy Theatre.
An exciting new permanent display is now open at Pickford’s House Museum in Derby (41 Friar Gate, Derby DE1 1DA). The museum has free entry and is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 1000-1700.
The Frank Bradley Collection of Model Theatres, which has occupied just one small room, is the basis of the display which now expands to fill three rooms on most of the top floor.
The Display shows links to the real theatre including the Derby Theatre and its premiere of “Dracula”!
Visitors can try out a wind machine and a thunder run and have a go at creating their own toy theatre characters and scenes and displaying them in a theatre that we have made for this activity.
In 2010 Benno Mitschka and Christine Schenk set up a company in Germany known as Multum in Parvo Toy Theatres. You can find their web page at www.papiertheater-shop.com.
They print high quality copies of Toy Theatre sheets to order. Their repertoire includes the classic sheets produced by Chroust (Czech), Pellerin, Jacobsen, Mon Theatre, Paluzie, Rigler (Budapest), Robrahn, Scholz, Schreiber, Seix y Barral, Trentsensky, Weissenburg and other publishers.
We are publishing a new Toy Theatre Stage Front in order to celebrate an amazing 70 years of service by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The theatre is called “Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee Toy Theatre” and is loosely based on the famous proscenium of Her Majesty’s Theatre in London.
You can download the stagefront in 3 sheets here. Please note that it prints on A3 paper.
The theatre will take the traditional 6 by 7 inch Toy Theatre scene size.
We are adding another free Toy Theatre play to download. It is “Faust” which we published originally as a printed play back in 1978, although less than a hundred copies were ever sold. It is part of the repertoire of Ulrich Chmel who has performed it in venues in various cities in Austria. We hope you enjoy it, here you have both coloured and plain versions ( allowing you to colour it yourself) and also the playbook. We published the directions for performing Toy Theatre plays last year so please refer to that if you are not familiar.
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