Last Summer we made our first paper theatre and called our production company Scout and Pony. We made the cast of a couple of our favorite fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Nattie had a fantastic idea to create our own original fairy tale, one that predates both Riding Hood's and Goldilocks. One year later, we finally got to it: The Bear Wedding!
The cast of The Bear Wedding is the two bears that are the parent bears in Goldilock's story. The Wolf and Granny, both from Riding Hood are the best friends of the Groom and Bride, respectively. The Wolf even officiates for the ceremony. As for the witnesses/friends we decided to use three famous little pigs who had houses made of sticks, straw and brick.
Instead of a paper theatre like our first, we wanted something more stable and permanent. Originally I was going to recycle and reuse a cereal box, cutting out a huge frame in the middle for the stage. I am glad I waited because the box we ended up using was absolutely perfect! Our box theatre is a Bulleit Bourbon gift set box that already had the opening to see the items inside. All I had to do was remove the clear plastic and I had an instant stage box. I turned the insert to the blank side and created our back drop of the forest with markers and crayons. For future productions and stories, I can reuse this one or take it out, use it as a template to cut and fold a new backdrop to illustrate. To cover the header of the theatre, I used black stock paper, decorative tissue paper and a white chalkboard paint marker to make the 'curtains'. For the wedding, we also included a coffee paper daisy garland on twine. I also added two bushes and just inserted them in the front (for the actual play, my son got to them and you'll see them just laying in the box). Our Cast of Characters are drawn, colored and cut from stock paper, and glued onto bamboo skewers.
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Our story for The Bear Wedding is not concrete, but has a basic structure. We have decided that the two meet at a Blackberry festival in the woods while accompanied by their best friends. After the festival they return to Granny's house for blackberry jam on fresh made biscuits with blackberry lemonade. The three pigs are in the story for support and help and they are delighted once their hear of the engagement. My daughter manage to video the Wedding scene. It's quite different from what we imagined the scene would be but we did forget that our audience included a one and half year old. Here are scenes from the play, taken by Nattie.
We played Seabear's The Ghost That Carried Us Away in the background and deck ourselves out in fancy jewelry for the show.
And now I present to you, The Wedding Scene featuring the entire cast and audience involvement:
Nattie had the great idea for the next time we put the play on (besides keeping it on a higher platform away from her brother). She said we should have a reception scene for the play where we include all the blackberry treats we mention in the story. We are part of the reception and we will bake/make and have biscuits, blackberry jam, blackberry honey, blackberry lemonade and maybe even blackberry pies or tarts. Sounds good to me.
