Play set:Remco Showboat

The ancient Greek playwrights were not the first to give actors something to say, but public theater has been around for thousands of years. And that is how long children have enjoyed theater play. What adults see as sophisticated public entertainment, kids do as naturally as making up stories of their own and acting them out. Using theater play sets became a favorite pastime as soon as chromolithograph printing made colorfully printed stage sets and characters inexpensive and plentiful. This Remco Showboat offers 20th-century kids a theater operation nearly as sophisticated and intricate as their parents might enjoy in a Broadway production. The pink riverboat decked out as a theater suggests Remco marketed the set chiefly to girls, and the Internet records adults reminiscing about the pleasurable hours they spent acting out stories on their Remco Showboat. The set dates from 1962, and it includes scripts, scene changes, and cut-out characters for four enduringly popular stories--Pinocchio, Cinderella, the Wizard of Oz, and Heidi.