Children's Stages and Theaters

LEVELS - Often there is some feature in your house that just screams "Show Biz!" Maybe there is a step or two - a change in level - between, say, the entry hall and the living room. Arrange dining room chairs in a row facing this and a performance on the higher lever is now "on-stage." If your stairs are nearby that's a bonus - now there are multi-levels for more dramatic blocking and Juliet can stand up a couple steps for her balcony (a tall stool twined with roses works well too).

DOORWAYS & CURTAINS - If you're lucky, there's a wide doorway or cased opening between two spaces - add a curtain and that opening - Voila! - becomes a proscenium. This could be done as simply as by installing two strong hooks at the upper right and left corners of the opening, then tying a nylon cord clothes-line-style between them. A couple of bedsheets (with the cord pulled through the biggest hem) become a pair of Grand Drapes. If you sew, hemming lengths of a light-weight velour (red!) would make even more satisfying theater curtains and, if feeling lavish, you could add fringe at the bottom hem or other elaborations as your fancy directs. A more permanent version of this idea would be to install a real drapery rod and heavier drapes. If your house is old enough or your decor traditional, these may be appropriate decorations: portieres were once very popular, partly because they look nice, partly because they stop drafts. (In "Gone With the Wind," Scarlet wears her mother's green velvet portieres as a dress.)

BED CURTAINS - This idea works well at a child's bed, where a footboard and draperies make an easy puppet theater. (I knew one much-loved puppet theater that was the foot of a lower bunk plus gingham curtains - perfect.) In the book "Little Women," Jo and her sisters performed their plays using the curtains of an old four-poster bed.

Curtains are always popular with junior thespians. If you have drapes covering a big patio door, have the actors do their acting on the patio, while the audience sits inside looking out. Or vice versa depending on whether the play is set in an interior or exterior. Do both! Make the audience move as real theaters do when performing "House and Garden."

SCREENS - A pair of folding screens could make sides for a theater (mini-wings). You could paint these with theatrical motifs like Comedy and Tragedy masks. Would the kid version could be Smiley and Frowny Faces?

Do a little research on grand historic theaters to get ideas. (Researching with the kids might be a good lesson in history, architecture, and in library/research skills too. Then you get the messy fun of painting!) If very ambitious and with older children or teens, you could together design and build these "wing" screens. It would be easy with thin plywood and a scroll saw to give the wing-screens either the architectural profile of an old theater - then paint on the architecture - or to cut tree shapes for a more pastoral look.

Most ambitiously, perhaps for Scouts of a church youth group, you could create a whole demountable mini proscenium built from traditional theater flats of fabric stretched on 1x4 wood frames and painted.

Researching theater buildings could be both fun and, well, educational. It will help in designing and decorating your at-home theater. Look at books and the internet for historic theaters like Shakespeare's Globe Theater.

The Globe is particularly worth discussing. There's the Shakespeare connection, of course. Even quite young children enjoy the story of "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" with it's feuding fairies, it's silly mortals running around, and the goofy guy with the donkey ears. Easy to slip in a history lesson here, filled with fascinating characters like Queen Elizabeth I and events like the discovery of America. (Try acting out the wreck of the Spanish Armada at bath time. Sink some duckies!)

The Globe Theater is also interesting as a building, with its construction of timbers infilled with brick and mud and its straw roof. A cannon shot during Shakespeare's "Henry VIII" set fire to the thatch roof - another fun fact! (Perfect opportunity for Mom to perform the ever popular no-playing-with-matches speech.) This historic theater has been recently rebuilt - a interesting example of archeology and a potential field trip.

Visiting a local theater, especially if you're lucky enough to have a good children's theater and/or a historic theater in your area, would make a great (slightly less expensive) field trip. When you go, have a contest to see who can spot the most how-theater-works items off of the stage: notice the lobby; the box office and ticket collector; the program and what's in it; the way seats, aisles, and balconies are designed; the many fire exits (fire has always been a problem in theaters even without cannons); the way the curtains, if any, work; the sets and lighting; the costumes. And the performances and story.

Or research the great opera houses of Paris and Milan. (More great field trips!) Talk about the Paris Opera House and the story of the Phantom. Play music from the musical. (There really IS a subterranean lake under the Opera. Really, truly.)

You can't play theater without props and costumes!

First find a big box - or maybe two marked "Props" and "Costumes" in florid lettering.

Now fill the "Costume" box with Mom's old shoes and party dresses for princess-wear and Dad's ties or lumberjack flannel shirts. Add hats, red hoods and hero capes, shopkeepers' aprons, fishermen's hats, striped witchy socks, and anything else interesting that you can scrounge (scrounging is half the fun).

Then fill the "Prop" box with plastic swords and goblets and crowns, astronaut helmets (is that costume?), wood-choppers' rubber axes and light sabers, baby bottles, toy animals, three bear-sizes of bowls with plastic porridge and other fake food including a poisoned plastic apple... plus all the other intriguing clutter that kids need to swash and buckle with.

Creating these theatrical trunks could be a lot of fun - and using them even more so!

(Remember in the book Little Women the contents of those sisters' theater trunk? Most treasured was a pair of tall leather boots for the heroes to wear. For my kid, it was a pair of my boots from college - tall red leather with miles of laces - that became beloved pirate wear.)

(You might want to look this over before your kids do.)

This puppetry troupe from Palermo, or one very like it, visited Dallas years ago. My kid and I saw a performance. This is AUTHENTIC Medieval-style puppetry - which means Monty Pythonesque whacking with wooden swords and carved wooden limbs getting hacked off. My kid loved it! But I definitely saw some moms covering their younger children's eyes.

The following website has a video clip (full of funny puppet beheadings etc.), interesting photos of puppets and workshops, and a link to Palermo's marionette museum.

Knights, Princesses and Brutality at the Puppet Show
Ancient puppetry from Palermo.