When I was living in London in the late '60s/early '70s, I made acquaintance with "Professor Alexander" and John Foreman - two hugely knowledgeable persons in the Punch and music-hall world. I was also fascinated in those days by the "penny plain, twopence coloured" cardboard cut-out theatres sold (and still sold, I believe) by Pollock's in Covent Garden.

My old buddy Pete Charlton - current Historian of the British Music Hall Society - does large-scale, street-theatre-on-a-barrow versions of "The Siege of Troy" and "Saint George and the Dragon", the art of which is very much based on the cardboard theatre. The little wires on which the cardboard figures are manipulated from the wings become large 2x2" wooden rods in the barrow version!