Toy theater

Toy theater, also called paper theater and model theater (also spelt theatre, see spelling differences), is a form of miniature theater dating back to the early 19th century in Europe. Toy theaters were often printed on paperboard sheets and sold as kits at the concession stand of an opera house, playhouse, or vaudeville theater. Toy theaters were assembled at home and performed for family members and guests, sometimes with live musical accompaniment. Toy theater saw a drastic decline in popularity with a shift towards realism on the European stage in the late 19th century, and again with the arrival of television after World War II. Toy theater has seen a resurgence in recent years among many puppeteers, authors and filmmakers and there are numerous international toy theater festivals throughout the Americas and Europe.

The original toy theaters were mass-produced replicas of popular plays, sold as kits that people assembled at home, including stage, scenery, characters and costumes. They were printed on paperboard, available at English playhouses and commercial libraries for "a penny plain or two pence coloured." Hobbyists often went to great pains to not only hand-color their stages, but to embellish their toy theater personae with bits of cloth and tinsel. Just as the toy-sized stages diminished a play’s scale, their corresponding scripts tended to abridge the text, paring it down to key characters and lines for a shorter, less complicated presentation.

In the first half of the 19th century more than 300 of London’s most popular plays saw issue as toy theaters. Publishers sent artists to the playhouses of Georgian and early-Victorian London to record the scenery, costumes and dramatic attitudes of the greatest successes of the day. A free seat was often provided to these artists by the theatre management, as the toy theatre sheets were excellent free advertising.

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