theatre

I gave my niece and nephew their Christmas present yesterday. I knew this was a cool present, but to my delight it worked even better than expected.

I'd decided to make them a puppet theatre partly to save money, but also because it made sense for their personalities. Tessa is six and has got into reading and writing stories in a seriously big way, but also loves to draw and make things. Julian is four and spends as much time as possible with his face pressed to the floor and one eye closed, so he can better see the train stories he's playing out. Their parents have always had a great passion for roleplaying games, from Dungeons and Dragons to World of Warcraft.

I'd decided on the theatre but not got very far with it when we went down to Pop's funeral, and on the way just happened to find some finger puppets in a $2 shop in Taupo. This was such a boon - I'd thought I would have to make them - and it also decided the theatre setting for me, because the puppets were a princess, prince, fairy, witch, dragon and scarecrow.

I made the theatre itself out of a cardboard box. I cut out a decorative facade for the top and hung some gold embroidered curtains (sari offcuts from the quilting box) from dowel suspended behind the facade. I covered the outside of the box with strips of bright and shiny coloured paper, then painted blue sky and green grassy hills on the inside. I used leftover box cardboard and felt pen to make props - a castle, a tree with lots of red apples and one golden apple, a well, a lake and a train track.

I fitted each of the puppets with a length of dowel, and there are strips cut out of the bottom of the box, to allow the puppets to be moved around from underneath. Today we sat the box on the edges of two armless chairs, but there are probably better ways to facilitate this. I also made a playbook with lots of blank pages, so that Tessa could write down their plays.

I thought we would have to spend some time explaining how it all worked to them, but as soon as we set the box on the chairs the kids jumped in and began the task of liberating the princess from the spell which turned her into a dragon at night - of course, this required the magical golden apple, but it also required the princess ignoring the witch's instruction to find the apple inside the dark hole in the tree.... It was great collaborative action; Julian was just eager to add to the action as Tessa, and together they easily moved the story to a resolution.

After the first cycle of plays, Tessa started contemplating the book, and told me it would be useful for them to write the stories down so they could do the same play several times for different people. I was in the kitchen a short time later when there was the most wrenching wail - she was trying to write it all down as Julian and my brother played things out, but they were going too fast and she couldn't keep up. Her dad explained that it was extremely difficult to write that fast, and that it would work better to write down the plays beforehand or from memory afterwards. That restored equilibrium, and things got better still when grandma dug out a little dictaphone.

As I was leaving I explained to Tessa that she could make more props for it, and she said she was going to make more trees for a forest, and a bucket and winch for the well so that it would be a magic well. Julian, on the other hand, was hugging the traintrack - as much as he loved the rest of the present, I have to admit he would have been absolutely delighted just to receive that one strip of cardboard with lines drawn on it in felt pen....