Chapter III: Choosing Your Play

It may not always be easy to find just the play you wish for your marionettes. If you should go to your library and ask for a marionette play, it is possible that the librarian would have very little to offer you. But if you should go to her and ask for a good story that you could make into a marionette play, you would probably be surprised to see how many books she would place before you. You might even feel confused when you came to make your choice. Suppose that you wish to give a humorous play. Begin by making a list of the very best of the humorous books:

_Alice in Wonderland_—Carroll
_Alice, Through the Looking Glass_—Carroll
_Gulliver’s Travels_—Swift
_Pinocchio, The Story of a Marionette_—Lorenzini
_Don Quixote_—Cervantes
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_—Shakespeare
_Peter and Wendy_—Barrie
_Rip Van Winkle_—Irving
_Just-So Stories_—Kipling
_Arabian Nights_—Edited by Colum
_Uncle Remus_—Harris
_Rose and the Ring_—Thackeray
_Tom Sawyer_—Clemens
_Wind in the Willows_—Grahame
_Tales of Laughter_—Wiggin and Smith

You will find that it is not at all difficult to turn the vivid and amusing characters of these books into marionettes. Neither is it difficult to turn these stories into marionette plays.

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.

These three things you must do if your play is to be only the simplest kind of a Burattini play, if it is to be a shadow play, or a marionette play.

If you are not experienced in making marionette plays, you may think that you need a great many characters to act your story. But the more you learn about marionette plays, the more you will be surprised to find how few characters, and incidents, and scenes you will need. Choose only those which are most important. This means that you should know your story very well indeed before you begin to make your play. When you thoroughly know your story and all the characters in it, all that they say and do, you will enjoy your play-making quite as much as your play-giving.

_Scenes from the marionette play, "Adventures of Alice," given by
ninth year pupils of Fairmount Junior High School at the Cleveland
Museum of Art. Marionettes made by Tuesday Marionette Club._
]

Let us choose one or two humorous books and see how we can turn them into a marionette play. We might choose _Alice in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_. You remember how the story of _Alice in Wonderland_ begins? Alice falls asleep under the tree and the white rabbit passes by. So one might select:

Incident I. Alice and the White Rabbit

Incident II. Alice and the Caterpillar

Incident III. Alice and Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

Incident IV. Alice and Humpty Dumpty

Incident V. Alice and the Duchess, the Cheshire Cat, the Cook and the
Pig Baby

Incident VI. Alice and the Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse

Of course, a dozen plays could be made from these two books, but these six incidents will be quite enough for your purpose. A good play, as you know, must not be too long, it must begin in the right way, the story must hold together, and it must be very interesting all the time, and it must have the right ending. The above six incidents were selected with these requirements in mind.

Now, how many acts shall we have? Since this is a dream story, the play might begin by showing Alice falling asleep under the trees, and the White Rabbit running past, and then Alice jumping up and following him. This part of the play we might call a Prologue since it begins the story. Then follow with:

Act I. Scene: In the woods

Act II. Scene: In the Duchess’s kitchen

Act III. Scene: The mad tea party

To bring the play to an end, there might be a closing scene, or epilogue, showing Alice waking from her dream and becoming herself again.

We must now decide just how many characters are really necessary in these six incidents. Let us take a pencil and make the list as we find them in these three acts:

Prologue: Alice and the White Rabbit.

Act I. Alice, the Caterpillar, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, Humpty
Dumpty

Act II. Alice, the Duchess, the Pig Baby, the Cook, the Cheshire Cat