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.