06 October 2004

Tall Horse


Last weekend I saw a production of Tall Horse by the Handspring Puppet Company. They specialize in using life sized wooden puppets that require up to 3 puppeteers to manipulate. A certain suspension of disbelief is necessary, since the puppeteers are visible the whole time (apparently a traditional Chinese puppeteering style), but once you get used to it, you literally don't even notice the puppeteers anymore, and the puppets come alive. Here, the whole 5 m tall giraffe was handled by just 2 puppeteers on stilts.


The story of Tall horse is based on the life of a giraffe that was caught in southern Sudan, taken up the River Nile in a felucca and shipped across the Mediterranean by the Viceroy of Egypt to be presented as a gift to the King of France. It wintered in Marseilles and in the spring of 1827 took several months to walk to Paris, creating a sensation along the route and, some say, inspired the design of the Eiffel Tower.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Casyn said...

That looks fantastic!

Shame I can't jump on a plane and pop over to see it.

4:00 pm, October 07, 2004  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The production is actually touring in the U.S. staring next week. It stops in New York first, I think. I'm going to see it in Ann Arbor, Michigan...I'm pretty sure it's there from October 18-22. www.ums.org for info.

4:20 pm, September 29, 2005  

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