Chapter IV Making Your Stage
A chair, sofa, or table top may have been the first stage on which you moved about your tin soldiers and paper dolls. Your imagination supplied the scenery and lighting. A small table turned upside down and placed on top of another table may have been your next invention. A curtain drawn about its three sides and your string of Christmas-tree lights gave you a very satisfactory little theater. As your stagecraft developed, you may have seen possibilities in a soap box or a dry goods box. By knocking out one side to make a proscenium opening and painting scenery on the back of the box or on to cardboards which you slipped in and out, you had a very real stage. With a proscenium arch made from cardboard and decorated to suit the play, a little curtain on a rod, Christmas-tree lights, and your company of small doll actors, you had a complete theater. It could be placed in a door or an archway, or between two screens.
Possibly you were interested in the Burattini. You may have made a booth somewhat like the illustration and decorated it quite gaily. It had this advantage. By means of hinges it could be folded together. It was no trouble to take anywhere, indoors or out, to a friend’s backyard, to school, to the playground, or even to a picnic.
If your enthusiasm had led you further, you would have been interested in the drawings of a semi-professional marionette stage which are shown on the next two pages.
A Stage floor, 10’ × 32”. B Bridge for puppeteers, 24” wide, 12” high above stage floor. C Beaverboard facing (10’ × 4’ 6”) in which proscenium arch (6’ × 30”) is cut. D Backdrop, 7’ × 4’. E Supporting trestles, 33” high. F Bridge ladder. G Bridge fence. H Iron rod attached to fence for holding S hooks. I S hooks for holding marionettes when not in use. J Supporting frame for wings and backdrop. K Footlight trough. L Curtains.
K Footlights. M Switchboard. N Movable strip (one for each side of stage) of wing lights. O Boxed overhead lights for general stage illumination. Nine sections complete the line. R Large curtains between the audience and back stage—framing the stage. Fig. O Two sections of overhead lights showing bulb, and colored sheet gelatin Q inserted. Each section can be operated independently from the switchboard. Fig. P If the boxed lights are not practicable the simple tin trough with colored bulbs may be used.