FullReads

Folding screens may be covered on both sides with strips of lining wall-paper of delicate tints, pinned on with drawing-pins. The paper can be left plain, or it may serve as the background on which to affix “Shakespeare Scenery.” Or again, your amateur painter will find an easier and more effective reward for such labour as he will not grudge to bestow in the holidays, if, instead of attempting the ambitious task of scene-painting on canvas, he adorns these scenery screens with Japanese designs in water-colours. Bold and not too crowded combinations of butterflies and flamingoes, tortoises, dragons, water-reeds, flowers and ferns. He need not hesitate to employ Bessemer’s gold and silver paints, with discretion, and the two sides of the screen can be done in different ways. The Japanesque side would make a good drawing-room background, and some other scene (such as a wood) might be indicated on the other with a nearer approach to real scene-painting. These screens light up beautifully, and are well adapted for drawing-room theatricals.

In the common event of your requiring a bit of a cottage with a practicable door to be visible, it will be seen that two folds of a screen, painted with bricks and windows, may be made to do duty in no ill fashion as the two sides of a house, and with a movable porch (a valuable stage property) the entrance can be contrived just out of sight. The stage will be brightened up by laying down a “crumb cloth,” or covering it with holland. A drawing-room scene is made very pretty by hanging up pairs of the summer white muslin curtains, looped with gay ribbons, as if there were windows in the sides of the stage.

If a fireplace is wanted and will do at the side, a mantelpiece is easily represented, and a banner screen will help to conceal the absence of a grate. A showy specimen of that dreadful thing, a paper grate-ornament, flowing well down into the fender, may sometimes hide deficiencies. The appearance of hot coals in a practicable grate is given by irregularly-shaped pieces of red glass, through which light is thrown from a candle behind.

A very important part of your preparations will be the dresses.

Now of dresses it may be said–as we have said of scenery–that if the actors are clever, very slight (if suggestive) accessories in the way of costume will suffice. At the same time, whilst the scenery can never be good enough in amateur theatricals to cover deficiencies in the performance, good costumes may be a most material help to the success of a piece. Very little wit is demanded from the young gentleman who plays the part of a monkey, if his felt coat is well made, and his monkey-mask comical, and if he has acquired some dexterity in the management of his tail.

I think, my dear Rouge Pot, that you were taken to see that splendid exhibition of stage properties, Babil and Bijou? Do you remember the delightful effect of the tribe of oysters? The little boys who played the oysters had nothing to do but to hop and run, and keep their shells nicely in front of them, and yet how we laughed at them! Now, in a large family, such parts as these afford an opportunity for allowing “the little ones” to “act,” and so to become accustomed to the stage, before they can be trusted to learn written parts. Nor are comical costumes beyond the powers of home manufacturers.

You know those men–sandwich-men as they are often called!–who go about the London streets with one board in front and one behind. These boards are of simple shape and only reach from the shoulder, to a little below the knee; they are only wanted to paste advertisements on. But if you think about it, you will see that to have the boards high enough to hide the head, and low enough to hide the legs, rounded at the top like a scallop shell, with the ribs of the shell nicely painted, eyeholes to peep through, and the hinge of the shell arranged to conceal the feet, would be no very great effort of skill. Sandwich costumes for the little ones might be of many effective shapes. Thick paste-board would probably be strong enough for very little people, and in many cases a covered framework would be better still, and if you have a kite-maker in your troupe, you had better commit these costumes to his skill and ingenuity. A very simple device would be that of flower-pots painted red. They need come no higher than the chin, if a good thick bush is firmly held by the little hands behind, so as to conceal the face. But no doubt, my dear Rouge Pot, you will say, “if we have no plays with such characters in, we cannot have them, however desirable it may be to bring in the little ones.” But I think you will find some of the elders ingenious enough to “tack them on” to your pieces if required, especially to those founded on fairy tales.