Building a paper theatre

A couple of months ago, Marco and I went to see a number of paper theatre performances. I knew miniature theatres from museums and old illustrations, and was quite surprised finding out people are actually still using them! We saw two operas (‘The Flying Dutchman’ by Papiertheater Papirnik Essen, ‘Tsar and Carpenter’ by Papiertheater am Ring-Wilhermsdorf), a radio play (‘SOS Italia by Papiertheater Heringsdorf) and a normal play (Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’ by Papiertheater Joli Vilsbiburg).

Already during the day, I felt inspired to create my own miniature theatre. And there was actually only one option for which story to adapt - my favorite fairytale, ‘The Snow Queen’ by Hans Christian Andersen.

The framework was finished quite quickly. I was very proud of Marco and me for calculating all the sizes correctly, and of me for constructing something with wood and screws…! I ordered prints of backgrounds and side panels, cut, pasted, sew, pasted again, cut out characters, wrote a script, searched for the right background music, recorded the voice-over texts… And that is the currect state the theatre is in. In the next step, Marco and I will record the dialogues. As soon as my figure sliders will arrive (which are currently being custom-made in Denmark), we are ready to perform!