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While Wilco will be taking to the big stage at MASS MoCA this weekend, a myriad of other strange creatures will be performing in miniature downtown when Main Street Stage retells Lewis Carroll’s classic tale of Alice in Wonderland using an authentic toy theatre dating back to the 19th century.

“I’d been searching local antique shops for a working toy theatre for some time without much luck,” explains the director Calvin Callay, “so you can imagine my surprise when I found, quite by accident during a garden tour of at The Mount in Lenox, a classic freestanding Danish Dukketeater, designed I think, by Alfred Jacobsen in the 1880s. No one seems to mind that I’ve borrowed it.”

Calvin Callay, who teaches theatre history at a local college and is co-founder of Tumtum Tree Art Collective, has set out to rediscover the wonder and magic of Victorian toy theatre and share it with the North Adams community. “It’s amazing just how life-like tiny bits of cut up paper can become—if you squint your eyes a bit, it’s almost like being transported back in time to an age of drawing rooms and petticoats, and when treating astigmatism was much more tricky.”

Professor Bandersnatch of Willibum College, Willibum, CT notes that the Toy Theatre was a very popular parlor game and after dinner activity in many Victorian households right here in North Adams.

“During a visit to North Adams in 1905, President McKinley was reported to have enjoyed a delightful Toy Theatre adaption of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, and later wrote in his Presidential diary, “I should quite like being shot from a canon, I think.”

Bandersnatch, (whose research on the popular toy theatre play Blackbeard the Really, Really Scary Pirate won him the 2009 Lectura Obscura prize) notes, “It’s quite rare to discover a fully working Victorian theatre in such good condition. I haven’t seen anything of this ilk since I came across The Triumph of Neptune in a dumpster behind Best Buy.”

“Oddly enough, several popular television shows have been based on classic European toy theatre games. Most notably, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” originates from the French farce Fraîchement Lavés Balades Prince en Dehors (The Freshly Washed Prince Strolls Outside) and the widely popular “The Hills” was developed from the German toy theatre play Frech Hügel Auf Denen Menschen Kinder Schokolade Milch Zum Frühstück (The Naughty Hills Where People Drink Chocolate Milk for Breakfast).”

Appropriate for all ages, Alice in Wonderland will be performed Saturday, Aug. 14 at 11 am and Sunday, Aug. 15 at 10 am at Main Street Stage, 57 Main Street, a five-minute walk from MASS MoCA. Tickets are $7. Click here for reservations or call the box office at 413-663-3240