First Steps...

Over my Christmas week holiday, I was finally ready to start my part in putting the theatre together - mounting the proscenium. To say I was intimidated was an understatement. I guess my research and care paid off - I was able to do it, and it turned out great.

Now I'm starting to color (and mount on backing) the scenery sheets and characters. I'm also going to try my hand at fashioning my own character slides - that will be another adventure!

Commission Toy Theatre Update #6 - Arrival

Ann's AMAZING toy theatre arrived a few days ago. The picture at left is what it now looks like, put back together after its journey across the country. I will be taking down the front and applying the Reddington Procenium, etc. to it, which will my first time ever doing one. Ah, the excitement! Ah, the anxiety!! I shall do my homework to ensure that I do it the best that I can, and the rest will be up to the theatre gods...

Commission Toy Theatre Update #5 - Teaser!

From Ann Neff comes the following teasers; by the way, the theatre is on its way to me in the mail (excitement does not begin to describe it...!)

This not the final formal portrait, but I couldn't keep you totally in suspense. This how the Redington will be pasted on. Of course, there is the tip piece, too.

By the way, that Reddington she is using is a high quality photo copy I had sent to Ann to use while designing and building the theatre, and is not the copy I will be using to color and mount on the frame.

If you click on the image (or any of the images in this post), they will open up larger; if you look closely at this one, you will notice the little holes for the footlights!

Here we see the toy theatre in its collapsed form; it was made this way purposely for two reasons - I live in a small apartment, and storage comes at a premium, and also for convenience when travelling with it.

Note that the main part of the stage is reversible so it can be used with or without grooves.

And here is Ann's husband, George Neff - tester (This morning, husband George and the German automechanic neighbor George took my instructions on a trial run. With papers in hand, they put the whole thing together right from the box! I needed to add a few more comments -"Make sure you have removed everything from the base box before you fasten the stage floor down", etc.), but the instructions appear to do the trick...) - packing the theatre up to send on its way to me...

Toy Theatre meets the Future

There has been recent discussions on the toy theatre group about an exciting development. Despite earlier discouragement, a way has been found to capture the small stage digitally in a manner worthy of it. From Paul Weighall of Pollock's Toy Museum comes this wonderful news:

The DVD of Ali Baba is indeed hopefully the first of a deluge.

It was made by Steve Arnott for Pollock's Toy Theatres and it is software powered technology (as opposed to manual stop frame) using characters cut from the Pollock's published play. The computer makes the movement and animates the play as per story line within the frame of a toy theatre proscenium.

The animation has smooth movements, object shadows, character voices played by different actor/actress, character highlighting, a small amount of music between scene changes and other good stuff. It's like watching a TT performance with one's nose stuck right upto the stage front. Marvelous!


It looks just like a normal performance but without the slides. Ali Baba runs for 13 minutes and I am told took 3 days to complete. Now the basics are understood we of course hope to complete many more. Cinderella is already ordered and Blackbeard the Pirate should follow. After doing the popular shortened 1970 version plays we hope
to tackle the more difficult ones.

The DVD has two visual tracks, one for computer which will work anywhere and one for TV. We are therefore doing 2 DVD versions, one for USA TV (NTSC format) and Europe TV (PAL format).

With Hugo churning out beautifully coloured and mono versions of complete plays and play texts from hi-res digital scans, Pollock's selling a new range of hi-res scanned copies of old prosceniums and Steve also doing hi-res digital animations for plays, we are hopefully looking at a modest revival of English TT albeit in a modern format.

If all that sounds a bit salesy then I am sorry but having spent 3 years pushing in this direction I am rather pleased with the results. The cost of mass printing has stopped us making TT stuff for years now but we hope that with the reduced cost of scanning etc. we will be able to make available all the stuff that has been unavailable for ages due simply to demand being low and costs being high. As it costs about the same to do a play that is well known as a play that is not well known we think we can now offer the widest range of material some of which has not been seen for maybe 100 years or even more.

We may even do a couple of brand new plays…

I think it's simply marvelous that there has been found a way to innovate and make a way to popularize toy theatre into the future. Bravo to all involved!!