CHAPTER III

Producing Cut-out Shadow Plays

When you were very young you probably were quite skilful in making shadow rabbits, ducks, and donkeys on the nursery walls. With a friend you may have cut out paper animals and people and fastened them to sticks and then made a shadow play with their shadows on the wall.

Your interest in shadows may have led you to stretch a sheet across the upper part of a doorway and cover the lower part with a shawl. Here you stood concealed from your audience while you moved your shadow figures back and forth in a lively fashion as you spoke the lines of a favorite nursery rhyme or improvised a play.

The next step was converting the old three-part screen into a shadow booth.

When one wishes to use scenery with cut-out shadows some sort of frame is necessary to hold the screen. Here is a plan for a very simple and inexpensive standard. You can see that you can have any number of screens for this kind of standard, because it allows the screens to be slipped in and out in a moment. The materials required other than the lumber are unbleached muslin or cheap white window shades and black showcard colors, and a few brushes of different sizes. The muslin should be stretched and tacked to the frame. If you use a window shade it will not be necessary to stretch it and it provides an excellent surface on which to paint the scenery.

Making a shadow play is jolly good fun. First, make a list of the most important incidents in the story. Second, decide upon the number of scenes that you think necessary for your play. Third, decide upon the number of characters required for these scenes. You will be surprised to find how few characters and incidents are needed to tell your story. Choose only those which are most important. Know your story well before you begin. Let us choose the traveling musicians of Bremen for our play. The list of important incidents are as follows:

Incident I— Donkey on the road

Incident II— Donkey meets Dog

Incident III— Donkey and Dog meet Cat

Incident IV— Donkey, Dog, and Cat meet Cock

Incident V— Donkey, Dog, Cat, and Cock seek shelter for night in the wood

Incident VI— Cock sees a distant light

Incident VII— Donkey looks through the window of the robbers’ house

Incident VIII— Donkey, Dog, Cat, and Cock break through the window

Incident IX— Robbers flee with fright

Incident X— The animals devour the robbers’ feast

Incident XI— The animals settle themselves for the night

Incident XII— One of the robbers returns

Incident XIII— He is scratched by the Cat

Incident XIV— He is bitten by the Dog

Incident XV— He is kicked by the Donkey

Incident XVI— The Cock calls “Cock-a-doodle-doo”

Incident XVII— The robber flees to his companions

Incident XVIII— The robber describes the witch that clawed him, the demon that stabbed him, the giant that beat him with a club, the fateful spirit on the roof that screamed “Throw him up to me.” Four scenes will tell the story.