Dramatis Personae Catalogue #106

Grand Combat in the Secret Mine No.2
(Hodgson & Co., 1822)

As always, it is a joy to announce that the latest catalogue has come out from Dramatis Personae!

You will find all sorts of fascinating ephemera for sale, including some delightful toy theatre-related items.

I highly encourage anyone interested in vintage toy theatre to check them out...

Spotlight: Paper Cinema

They combine many elements, including toy theatre.  As Mike M. (my tipster) told me, "I love seeing the cut-outs freed from the stage..."

Troy in Troytown

From their website 'About' tab:

The Paper Cinema is an illustrated song, a shadow, a smoke, a mirror, a puppet show, a cinema show, side show, magic show, a show and tale, a show off. It exists in the meeting of live music and moving drawings.

What happens at the accidental meeting of inkblots, photocopies, cardboard, angle-poise lamps, the occasional table, video technology, a laptop and a banana box?

Best to see The Paper Cinema with your own eyes…



From a review:

"...Huddled in the dimly lit room we watched a screen in front of us while to one side the company themselves sat, arrayed around a tiny black box and a video camera. As they delicately moved dozens and dozens of paper cutouts back and forth in front of the camera on the screen in front of us a world was conjured; a world of pirates and plague, of mysterious figures and rowdy bars, of magical journeys and impossible twists of fate. To the gentle and perfectly pitched sound of a single live guitar these sinisterly beautiful illustrations danced across the screen. The whole experience was just completely lovely."

Toy Theatre Influence: 2D Animation II

Another animation film project that incorporates elements of toy theatre, is in production.

Molly is an incredible artist. I've been following her for years, and own some of her art. This is exciting to see her art come to life!

Toy Theatre as Therapy

The 2nd World Congress of Art Therapy will be held in Hungary this coming August. I recently learned that toy theatre is one of the forms that will be discussed in the context of therapeutic application. While using puppetry as therapy is not a new concept, I was fascinated to read how toy theatre in particular is being explored to use in just that way...

NOTE:  I initially took offense at the writer saying that "Nearly everyone who has dabbled in the Juvenile Drama agrees that the performances of the plays were usually a failure. It was the preparation that provided so many hours of delight."  But then I thought about it, especially after I read his later observations.  I think he has a strong point - while I don't think performances per se are 'failures', the process of creating is as important, if not moreso, than the finished product (at least for me...)  Whatever your opinion, I encourage you to give this unusual paper a read and see what the writer has to say...

New Shop Celebrates Storytelling

Liminal Space opened this week...

A new shop has opened in the London area that celebrates storytelling in many ways, including the form of toy theatre!

They describe themselves as "...a pop-up shop celebrating storytelling through the making and animating of hand-crafted objects."

You can see more here...

"...the grim ending to Baba Yaga is performed, as we watch a wicked,
money-hungry  stepmother and her two obnoxious daughters being
turned to ash by the flames from a skull's eyes."

Optical Toys: Cyclotrope

The Cyclotrope from tim Wheatley on Vimeo.

A delightful re-purposing of bicycle parts!

The creator, Tim Wheatley, had this to say...

The cyclotrope is a cycle of 18 images that is spun at a certan speed so that the frame rate of the camera filming it gives the illusion of animation.

Toy Theatre Influence: 2D Animation

Toy Theatre & Beyond

The Fifth Annual Toy Theatre After Dark Festival starts today in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Programming is staggered with several options for the festival-goer...

Intimate, inventive, and wonderfully odd, toy theater has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, especially in the Twin Cities. From shows-in-a-suitcase, paper marionettes, and wearable theater to shadow plays, weird object animation, and table-top cantastorias (sung stories), a new wave of theater miniaturists is captivating audiences with fresh approaches to an old art form. The award-winning Open Eye Figure Theatre began showcasing the burgeoning local scene in 2007, and now partners with the Walker to expand into a two-week festival and present a program that includes short new pieces from local and national artists. Two distinctly different programs offer a stunning spectrum of miniature puppetry work. Featuring the far flung and home grown puppeteers Justin Spooner, Kurt Hunter, Z Puppets, Robin Schwartzman, Kristi Tiernes, David Commander, Amber Davis, Dolly Wagglers, Michael Montenegro, Michael Sommers, and Billy Mullaney. Curated by Susan Haas with Michael Sommers and Philip Bither.

May Festival Recognizes Bicentennial

The poster's striking image is a brilliant focus on the foundation of toy theatre:  PAPER!

7th INTERNATIONAL PAPER THEATRE MEETINGS
25 – 29 May 2011
Pays d’Epernay – Terres de Champagne
Bicentenary of Paper Theatre Just 200 years ago, in the window of a small publisher’s book shop in London, appeared the sheets which made it possible to construct a real theatre at home for the first time; miniature but real…
All Europe published these theatres until they gradually disappeared at the beginning half of the twentieth century before reappearing in the 1980s by artists who brought them a future in other scales.
The Paper Theatre International Meetings which takes place in Pays d’Epernay – Terres de Champagne is devoted to this technique.
Exhibition
Paper Theatre from the Origins to the Present Day

Two hundred years of history, the first portraits until the most contemporary proposals
An exhibition in 200 m²
18 May – 25 June at the Multimedia library of Epernay
Coproduction: Papierthéâtre, Pays d’Epernay, Epernay Municipality, the Puppetry International Festival of Charleville-Mézières, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Champagne Ardenne Regional Council and Marne Departmental Council.
(The exhibition will be in Charleville-Mézières in September 2011)

SHOWS
16 companies
9 countries
20 towns

Companies:
Svalegangens Dukketeater – Denmark
Paperplays – England
Puppet Working Group – England
Anima – France
Théâtre de l’Arc-en-Terre – France
Atelier de la Boule Bleue – France
En Verre et contre Tout – France
Volpinex – France
Barbara Steinitz & Björn Kollin – Germany
Burgtheater – Germany
Darvag – Iran
Papelito – Italy
Facto Teatro – Mexico
Teatro de Formas Animadas de Vila do Conde – Portugal
Scope Toy Theatre – The United States

Towns:
Avize, Bouzy, Congy, Dormans, Epernay, Fleury la Rivière, Germaine, La Caure, Le Breuil, Mareuil le Port, Oeuilly, Orbais l’Abbaye, Pierry, Tauxières Mutry, Tours sur Marne, Troissy, Vandières, Vertus, Villeneuve-Renneville-Chevigny, Villevenard

Information:
Paperthéàtre
Papier.theatre@wanadoo.fr
Reservation:
MJC d’Ay
contact@mjc-ay.com
0033 (0)3 26 55 18 44

Website: www.ritp.fr

Toy Theatre for iPad Official Launch

The joy on the children's faces as they see their toy theatre creation come alive put a big smile on my face!

I love seeing today's tech-savvy kids gets turned on to old tech interpreted by new tech. A great idea, and hats off to Pollock's Toy Shop for introducing it...

Toy Theatre at the Library

Decameron no 2 a photo by John Elmslie on Flickr.

Mariella Bertelli is a storyteller and librarian with an extensive background in puppetry and theatre. She has recently worked on a retelling of the 16th century Italian classic Orlando Furioso and on her own stories inspired by material in the Toronto Archives.

Decameron no 5 a photo by John Elmslie on Flickr.

I contacted Mariella to ask about her involvement in toy theatre.  She shared that "...toy theatres are my passion after discovering them while working at the Osborne collection of Early Children's books...With my friend (and fellow librarian) Mary Anne Cree we have developed and performed (to private audiences) two shows -real adult content- adapting two stories from Boccacio's Decameron, and have had lots of fun doing them."


The source material sounds very challenging to adapt, but from the still shots I found of her doing one of the productions, shared here, it looks like it was an amazing occasion, complete with live music according to the notes!

Madness in Miniature

The House Theatre presents Madness in Miniature.

Performer, designer and puppeteer Meredith Miller stars in this elegantly macabre evening, which recreates the early 20th-century practice of parlor entertainment featuring toy theater and adult puppetry. Accompanied by live jazz and ragtime on grand piano, Miller evokes an Edward Gorey-esque vibe that tells a story of love and loss.


Meredith Miller’s hour-long escape into the depths of the Chopin Theatre’s opulent lounge recaptures the intimate feeling of the time when people performed toy-theater and puppetry for each other as live entertainment in their parlors. The mood is evocative of the artwork of Edward Gorey—elegant, macabre, understated, and hovering somewhere between Victorian and Art Deco. And by pairing a line-up of intimate, lush puppetry performances with virtuosic jazz and ragtime played live on a grand piano, we have the feeling of having slipped back in time and found ourselves in a mysterious, timeless, parlor populated by dark humor macabre notions of love and loss.

Meredith Miller is a Chicago-based designer and performer of original object-based theatrical works. Her recent work includes The Abduction, originally created for "The World is Flat! A Weekend of Toy Theater" at Chicago's Links Hall, where she shared the bill with Great Small Works. Following this performance, Meredith was invited to appear in Open Eye Theater's annual Toy Theater After Dark festival in Minneapolis, and Great Small Works' 9th Annual Toy Theater Festival in New York.

Sources: goldstar.com and thehousetheatre.com

Old + New = Spellbinding

French animation master Michel Ocelot has made a new film - Les Contes de la Nuit (or Tales of the Night) - featuring "...six freshly conceived fairy tales that are rendered instantly timeless."

The film is presented in 3D, which "...gives Ocelot's distinctive two-dimensional look a pop-up book feel..." - or as I prefer to imagine it, a kind of toy theatre depth!

Tomtom Boy: A boy trains to master a magic tom-tom drum that makes  everyone dance

The Doe Girl: A doting young man sees his beloved turned into a doe by a  jealous
sorcerer; she will stay that way unless he can find the touch that will change her back

Puppet Heap

Click to see Video...

Puppet Buzz posted today about a delightful series of videos that I had to pass on.  They are highly amusing and just plain fun.  Lots of hard work and love obviously went into their production, and it shows!

Vaudeville "Music Hall" Theatre

The above video shows an animated toy theatre. It's animated physically, not digitally. It's your standard paper toy theatre, but the characters and props are all jointed so in addition to sliding them around the stage, they can also be manually manipulated to perform actions.  To be more exact, "...they are string-pull puppets, working along the same principle as jumping jacks, so they can be 'remotely controlled' by a puppeteer."

The theatre is called "Vaudeville", but is also known by some as "Puppet Music-Hall", and it was created by Pete Brown.

Pete, a boat builder from Ireland, shared with me that he enjoys puppetry as a hobby, mostly large-scale for parades.  However, the idea of the music hall characters were "...just knocking around inside my head", so he felt he had to create something out of the premise.  This toy theatre design, and the book that followed, is the creative, innovative, and fun result!

Animation Resource

I ran across what I thought was a traditional toy theatre, but soon realized it was virtual.  "Whatever created this, is good," I thought.  I asked the website's creator to share a bit about the software used...

iClone is a 3D animation software. Up until now that sort of 3D software was expensive and slow. It took days or even weeks to build up the frames needed for a final animation. It had to place each and every pixel on the screen and work out how to bounce each and every ray of light off the scene. But iClone does all that instantly, because it uses a videogame engine and the user's PC gaming graphics-card to do all the heavy-lifting required to make a 3D animation. It's affordable too, and very usable - a lot of its content is drag-and-drop. My Alice Theater can be animated quite easily. There's a free version of iClone, iClone Ex, if people want to try it out.

Still from "Alice" toy theatre animation, created with iClone

Exhibition Feedback

"The Wedding Supper", somehow I want to call it the "Last Supper"!
How many celebrities can YOU identify? [Click to enlarge]

I recently wrote about an exhibition that uses toy theatre in a very fun, inventive, and stimulating manner. It opened last weekend.  One of the individuals behind the exhibition, Bren O'Callaghan, wrote to share some images from the exhibition (see below) and these kind comments...

Dear Trish

Thanks so much for getting in touch about my exhibition, apologies it has taken until now but I was consumed with the final few days of preparation and then had to take a few days off!

Please find attached two images of each theatre should you wish to use these on your site.

Thanks also for the lovely blog post, you seem to have the hang of the purpose behind the work - building upon the seed of an idea first proposed by TV comedian Harry Hill, actually the alter-ego of artist Matthew Hall. I picked up the baton of the earlier challenge so to speak, and decided to interpret Cruikshank's mammoth painting by selecting key vignettes from within the larger whole. I wanted to retain the sense of caricature and retreating fields of depth, which is why I turned to the form of toy theatres, and I glad I did because I've loved every moment of this project - even though it was hard work at times!

Best regards,

Bren

David Bailey

Laura Barnard

Charlotte Gould and Hannah Gibson

Simon Misra

Gemma Parker

John Powell-Jones

The exhibition is ongoing through February 27th.

Toy Theatre Bicentennial

A website devoted to the small stage has declared 2011 the bicentennial of toy theatre.

Actually there has been talk about 2011 being toy theatre's bicentennial year before.

I'm not sure how 1811 has gotten momentum as the chosen 'year one' of toy theatre; many will posit that toy theatre existed before then in one form or another, but as regards the classic form that is associated with Victorian England, I think it can be argued to have its roots in that general time frame.

The question now is, will the toy theatre community at large acknowledge this?  Will it be embraced, and used to celebrate and publicize toy theatre far and wide?  I think it would be a great opportunity to do so...

Toy Theatre Influence: Flash Menu

Still shot from interactive flash menu, featuring toy theater-like graphics
[Click to enlarge...]

I was introduced to a magical place yesterday.  The worlds it shares takes you beyond the mundane.  It is a magical place where you forget about things like homework, jobs, or bills, and your imagination can run wild.  It calls itself  "...a studio for the imagination."

Take their website, for instance.  When you arrive, you're immersed in a virtual world of castles and ships, hot air balloons and kites, with a road full of travelers coming and going.  If you move your cursor to the left or the right, the scene moves in that direction, and you are introduced to new landscapes, peoples, and goings on.  Visitors will discover that the scenes are, in actual fact, a very clever and fun interactive menu system, featuring toy theatre-like graphics.

The People You're Not Exhibition

Amy Winehouse character

Opening this weekend is a wonderfully satirical, creative, thought-provoking, and amusing exhibition that features toy theatre as part of its realization.

The People You're Not exhibition can be briefly described as "...a satirical trip through the private and public faces of fame, from the first heady days of idolisation and adoring fans, via rock and roll alter-egos, excess and media mockery to dysfunction, introversion and the eccentric depths of the celebrity soul."

Proposed by Harry Hill, realised by Bren O’Callaghan, the goal was to recreate George Cruikshank's THE WORSHIP OF BACCHUS using known alcoholics.

From the gallery's website, it is further described as "...Victorian satire meets Heat Magazine as six illustrators put a contemporary spin on scenes from George Cruikshank’s famous 1860 painting exposing the evils and horrors of alcohol. ‘Performers’ such as Kerry Katona and Liza Minnelli, Courtney Love and George Best, Oliver Reed and Lindsay Lohan are given centre stage in six large-scale Victorian-style toy theatres, setting the scene for cautionary tales of drunken celebrity clichés and the pitfalls of the demon drink.