Sunday, October 04, 2009
A Few Strings Attached
Jezebel: "Two giant marionettes, who had been walked by performers from the French street theatre company Royal de Luxe to each other from east and west Berlin, are united at the Brandenburg Gate at the conclusion of their performance on October 3, 2009 in Berlin, Germany."
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12 comments:
These are so cool! and a little creepy looking. I'm still a little unclear as to why they made huge marionettes, but its awesome. I'd be interested to know how they are really controlling them, because there are people on the ground with strings (reminds me of Macy's parade) as well as the large strings connected to big machines. Walking down French narrow streets must have been a joy.....
Also, just a random thought, but i think this would be a really cool way to enact gulliver's travels. Because real actors would be the small people and you could use a Giant marrionette for him :-)
I'd really like to see the rig they used to manipulate these marionettes. They look like they were made in the old fashion style, which suggests a pretty inetractive control setup given their size and what appears to be pretty close to full range of motion. I'd assume that there was some kind of crane or something like that following them holding them up, but the idea of them being suspended from something flying would be so much cooler. Not really sure what giant puppets have to do with the Cold War ending and Germany being reunited though.
I first saw this kind of thing when researching La Fura Dels Baus. They have done this kind of thing many times. They are a performative theatre group and they would travel from city to city on a ship and do these large scale shows with giants. I love the ways they control the giant creatures. I think this kind of drama should come over to the US. I would love to see giant marionettes walking through the city... or through a city like New York. Heres a video of La Fura Dels Baus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg75M-JMQBY
These marionettes are so striking and no doubt a way to make the very strong statement that this group was trying to make, while at the same time retaining that wonderful element a wonderful element of whimsy essential to the fairy tale style they were going for.
In addition it is great to see that in the picture all the people who control the marionettes are also in costume. This year we have been extensively exploring, especially in Salt peanuts, how to successfully convey a story and have discussed many times how delivery and content are both essential. The fact that these people are all dressed up creates a complete world and emphasizes the great use of scale, while successfully helping to tell a successful story.
I wonder why the company chose to use such large marionettes, yes, they are amazing to look at but what purpose does the scale serve? It certainly catches the eye, but the large size makes some actions appear scary ie. licking the lollipop. We, as viewers, might view the little girl as a monster of some kind, similar to that of Gulliver in "Gulliver's Travels". What I am also curious about is why the assitants are decked out in red (an eye catching color) and in what appear to be antique guards outfits? Perhaps some background on European culture would enlighten us to this theatrical piece beyond it simply being "cool".
I think that these marrionettes are a facsinating example of the inovative and ever changing mediums used to convey stories to a wide range of people. I think they provide a interesting presents on stage and would definately have a strong and dramatic impression on stage. As for the story, I think any story that can convey to an audience the lessons learned in history is a story worth being told. I feel that the dominating presents of the marionettes can provide the symbol of the most crucial aspects of the Cold War.
These marionettes are beautiful! I'm assuming that each function of the marionette is controlled by a different performer. Like Charlie said, I'd love to see the rig for them; it doesn't look like their feet touch the ground and as there's no internal support, they have to be dangling from something with means of propelling itself. I do love the comment about Little Sister and Big Daddy tho; I snorted my coffee. I'm sure that's not the intended effect, but hey, draw inspiration from everywhere.
I think this is an amazing feat. The amount of design that must go into them to make something of this size so functional and mobil. It would be interesting to talk with the technical designers about their process, their concerns and the problems they faced.
Aside from the design, what about cost? Cost to create, ship and operate. It seems it would be astronimical.
Then there is the trainging of the operators. How long did they get to learn their parts? How does a company hold rehearsals?
What a beautifully simple way of telling the historical story of Berlin! I really enjoy that they have used the seemingly simple idea of a doll, but pumped up the theatricality of the story telling by playing with the scale of the maquettes. I think that this is a very interesting and effective approach. It gives the story importance because of the scale of the puppets, without overshadowing the content.
That's so beautiful! I am just so happy to see something new and interesting. It's nice to see new ways of presenting ideas and stories to vast amounts of people. Not only is this something new and unique, it's capable of communicating to huge audiences--much more people than in a theatre or stadium.
Great to see how people are actually doing new things in the world--as opposed to flashy musicals based on movies based on musicals based on movies.
These look pretty cool. The video someone posted was nice as well...the engineering and creativity needed to make a object like this is really neat. They look a bit cluttered with all the ropes that take to operate them, but it fits in with the styling of the giants themselves.
This is really neat but, I'm not sure if the message would come across. However, I say this not knowing whether or not the people see the performance with previous knowledge of its point. It is definitely powerful by the mere size of the puppets.
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