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[[File: Toy theatre (c.1845-50), Edinburgh Museum of Childhood.JPG|thumb|Toy Theater (c.1845-50) by John Redington of London, showing a scene from Isaac Pocock's two-act play "The Miller And His Men". An exhibit in the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood]]
'''Toy theater''', also called '''paper theater''' and '''model theater''' (also spelt '''theatre''', see [[British and American spelling differences|spelling differences]]), is a form of miniature theater dating back to the early 19th century in Europe. Toy theaters were often printed on [[paperboard]] sheets and sold as kits at the [[concession stand]] of an [[opera house]], [[Theater (structure)|playhouse]], or [[vaudeville|vaudeville theater]]. Toy theaterstheatres were assembled at home and performed for family members and guests, sometimes with live musical accompaniment. Toy theatertheatre saw a drastic decline in popularity with a shift towards [[realism (theatre)|realism]] on the European stage in the late 19th century, and again with the arrival of [[television]] after [[World War II]].<ref>Bell, John. "A Short Entertaining History of Toy Theater." Cambridge: Great Small Works, 2008.</ref> Toy theatertheatre has seen a resurgence in recent years among many [[puppeteer]]s, [[author]]s and [[filmmaker]]s and there are numerous international toy theatertheatre festivals throughout the Americas and Europe.
==History==
===Late 18th and early 19th century===
The original toy theaterstheatres were mass-produced replicas of popular plays, sold as kits that people assembled at home, including stage, scenery, characters and costumes. They were printed on paperboard, available at English playhouses and commercial libraries for "a penny plain or two pence coloured." Hobbyists often went to great pains to not only hand-colorcolour their stages, but to embellish their toy theatertheatre personae with bits of cloth and tinsel. Just as the toy-sized stages diminished a play’s scale, their corresponding scripts tended to abridge the text, paring it down to key characters and lines for a shorter, less complicated presentation.
In the first half of the 19th century, more than 300 of London’s most popular plays saw the issue as toy theaterstheatres. Publishers sent artists to the playhouses of [[Georgian era|Georgian]] and early-[[Victorian era|Victorian]] London to record the scenery, costumes and dramatic attitudes of the greatest successes of the day. The theatre management often provided these artists with a free seat, as the toy theatre sheets were excellent free advertising. the dsfirpgfhrs'''rsa,herisflbnk sfb\l/c'opisrhbn ccfudhgrfbjnfdh'\eruobfjnu\oh';erdfgod\z;'hrgfdd;z\rhdfnbjvdrouhg;fnbodz;rguhfnbdrzo;uhnbfjv
===Late 19th and early 20th century===
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