How to Make a Shadow Puppet Theater

This is my daughter, soon to be 10 years old, posing with her newly created shadow puppets and puppet theater. This craft was so easy to make! We started with a cereal box, rescued from the recycling pile. This is what to do. Tape the box up well so that it's sturdy and closed. Then trace about 1 - 1 1/2 inches away from the edges of the large faces of the box. Do this on both sides. These are your marking lines. Next cut out the large rectangles you just drew. We used a utility knife for this. Wait! Save the cardboard you just cut away! You can use that for making puppets.

If you need to add more tape to the inside of the box to make it more sturdy, go ahead and do that now. Then find a sheet of fairly thin white or light colored paper. Tracing paper or wax paper would work well too. We just used plain old copy paper. Tape that over the hole on one side only. That side with the paper faces your audience. The other side is where you, the puppetmaster will work your magic.

If you want to decorate your puppet theater, you can. But remember, it will be dark as you give your show, so the audience really won't see a lot of what you design on it. So keep it simple. The image to the right is an example of a possible border around your theater. Click it to find the original image.

Below are the puppets -- simply shapes cut from cardboard with sticks taped on. We used bamboo skewers, but you can use craft sticks or straws as well. To make your puppets more lifelike, cut out legs, jaws, or arms separately from the body parts and attach them with paper fasteners (brads). Be sure to attach a stick on each part so you can move both pieces. Sprite made her shark have a hinged mouth! Very scary!

Now you've made your puppet theater and your puppets. All you need now is a darkened room, a lamp, and an audience to watch your brilliant performances!

Set up your room like this with the audience on one side of the theater and the lamp on the other. You need to be between the lamp and the theater but not blocking the light, of course!

NowHere is my daughter Sprite testing the set up.

It works! So now, on with the show!!