Guilty Pleasures

What can I say...I adore Peter O'Toole, and this made me laugh my *ss off...and, and...it's puppets!!

From Professor Will...

From Professor Will comes this fascinating information on toy theatre special effects, a result of a recent thread about the subject on the Toy Theatre Yahoo Group:

Lycopodium is a club moss spore; if you can identify the moss, you can collect it in the woods at the right time of year. It produces a flash because it's so fine that it "burns" when blown into in the air and ignited by a flame or spark (like a flour explosion). There are no oils involved. Finely powdered resin will do the same but is more dangerous (and smelly) Colored "fires" were frequently coarse resin combined with metal salts. They are technically a firework and appropriate regulations apply.

"Flash" paper, cotton, silk, etc. are forms of nitro cellulose, best acquired for a reputable magic supplier. Must be kept dry. They burn at a very low temperature (unlike magnesium!) Safest igniter is a model airplane glow plug hooked up to 12 volt battery. There's a slight delay which needs to be compensated for in performance. Small igniters that work with a 9 volt battery are available.

I found information about something called a flambol which is "...an apparatus, which is used to make a fire from a flambol with on a stage of a theatre." I have no idea how practial it might be, but thought I'd pass it on here for those that might be interested. This also sounds like a LOT of fun for those scientifically-minded - think of the possibilities!

Toy Theatre Goes to Court

88 F.2d 97
YOUNGv.RALSTON-PURINA CO.
No. 10748.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
February 17, 1937.

Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Iowa; Charles A. Dewey, Judge.

Action at law by Guy Young against the Ralston-Purina Company. From a judgment of dismissal, plaintiff appeals.

Affirmed.

Allen A. Herrick and Herschel G. Langdon, both of Des Moines, Iowa (D. Cole McMartin, of Des Moines, Iowa, on the brief), for appellant.

William Hossfeld, of Des Moines, Iowa (F. W. Lehmann, Jr., and W. B. Hurlburt, both of Des Moines, Iowa, on the brief), for appellee.

Before SANBORN, WOODROUGH, and BOOTH, Circuit Judges.
WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge.

The petition in this case presented a cause of action at law in two counts within the federal jurisdiction because of diverse citizenship of the parties. In the first count the plaintiff alleged that he had invented a certain toy movie theater for which he had a patent pending during the summer of 1934 and that during that summer he entered into negotiations with defendant to sell the use of the invention to the defendant; that defendant stated it was interested in utilizing plaintiff's idea on the basis of paying plaintiff a royalty on each toy theater used; that at defendant's request plaintiff disclosed all the details of his invention to defendant, and the defendant thereupon utilized the plaintiff's idea and invention and produced and distributed one million of said toy theaters and became thereby indebted to plaintiff for a reasonable royalty, figured at $12,500.

In the second count the allegations were "that on or about October 22, 1934, the defendant offered to purchase the use of plaintiff's invention to use said toy theatre idea" at a certain royalty price; that the plaintiff accepted the offer; and that the "defendant did produce and utilize * * * one million of said toy theatres and thereby became indebted to plaintiff in the sum of $12,500.00."

There was a prayer for judgment in the sum of $12,500, with interest and costs.

The defendant answered that it did cause toy movie theaters to be made and distributed as a premium during the latter part of 1934 and the early part of 1935, but the toys did not embody the plaintiff's invention and they were not made or distributed pursuant to any contract express or implied between plaintiff and defendant; that the structure of the toy movie picture theater was old and well-known to the public prior to plaintiff's alleged invention; and that the structure of those made and distributed by defendant was fully illustrated and described in six...

From TOYTHEATRE.NET...

From Hugo Brown's wonderful Toytheatre.net website, comes this great old newsreel!




It shows a printmaker from the 1920's making up toy theatre sheets, preparing them for a show, and a bit of a show itself.








An amazing find, Hugo!

Upcoming Performance

Thanks to the toy theatre list, I read about an upcoming toy theatre performance in that readers in the UK might want to take in; see more about it here...

Toys Watching Toy Theatre

8th Int'l Toy Theatre Festival - Summer 2008

The 8th International Toy Theater Festival & Temporary Toy Theater Museum is planned for Summer 2008, according to Great Small Work's newly-designed website.

They were recently awarded a well-deserved NEA grant towards developing and producing the festival, which is highly-regarded among those in the theatre and puppetry world.

Toy Theatre Influenced Rossetti

The Rossetti Archive has some wonderful examples of toy theatre art.

The site says that "...Nearly all of DGR's artistic juvenilia are drawn in the style of this popular art form that occupied the attention of the entire Rossetti household when DGR [Dante Gabriel Rossetti] was a boy."

Pollocks Trust Exhibition/Benefit

I missed this until stumbling on it today - the day after it closed! Profuse apologies to one and all. Hopefully those of you who may read this and are near enough to have taken it in, already knew about it anyways...

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!!

Phantasmagoria

A new book by one of the modern masters of the Magic Lantern sounds intriguing...

"...and think of Russia"

A very sweet, moving animation - with a moral...

Video Highlights of Toy Theatre Exhibition

From Google Video, comes this glimpse into a toy theatre exhibition last year; audio has some background noise, but for those of us who rarely if ever get to attend such things, it was worth listening a bit closer to catch it all... In the Spring of 2005, we archived a toy theatre exhibition of worldwide importance. It took place at the Lanchester Gallery, Coventry University. The intended audience was a web version for webcasting that we encoded for and also for inclusion on DVDs to promote the centre as a leader in cultural conventions. A puppet theatre performance was directed by Robert Poulter of the 18th century nautical melodrama 'Black-eyed Susan'. As well as the performance, many paintings were on exhibit, some quite rare. We recorded some of the performance and interviews with some of the attendees, which included an actor that once appeared in a major television 'soap' and a curator of a major Museum in London.

School Kids Learn Through Toy Theatre

Toy Theatre Workshop

Reader Andrew sends word about a workshop starting November 20th:

I thought you and your readers might be interested to know that The Toronto School of Puppetry is running a special four day Toy Theatre Workshop...

Thanks for letting us know, Andrew - looks like a great opportunity to learn and have fun!

Legacy Revisited

Back in January I posted about Gigi Sandberg's generous donation of her large toy theatre collection.

You can see some of the collection online...

Toy Theatre Search Engine

Google recently started offering custom searches. You build it yourself based on what you want. I built one based on the major toy theatre websites I am aware of, and intend to evolve it as things change.

You will find the search engine at the bottom of the blog main page. I've been testing it and it seems to work pretty nicely. Could be a handy tool if you need information but can't remember exactly where you saw it; it's likely to be on one of the pages included in this search engine...