His name is King Kong.
The gigantic puppet is the centerpiece of a $35 million musical, based on the classic 1933 film. In some ways, King Kong is a typical Broadway musical — there are songs and dances and dialogue. But what the audience really wants to see is the giant ape.
5 comments:
King Kong has me absolutely thrilled. I can't imagine what it must be like to walk into a theater and see a two story gorilla puppet, that acts more gorilla than puppet. That's an impressive feat, both on the designer and the actors parts: making a giant fabricated gorilla really seem alive, especially in the confines of a Broadway theater. The smaller image within the article of Kong and Pitts is truly mesmerizing. The Kong puppet is huge, but visually it is always contrasted to his human counterpart, whom is in white. However, the puppet could not work all by itself, so a lot of the credit has to be given to the Kong puppeteers. This method greatly reminds me of the puppet form, Bunraku, where multiple puppeteers control the specific hands, and although in plain sight, remain hidden. I like how one of the puppeteers explained their involvement as a the sort of shadow of Kong. I think just being in the awe of Kong you would sort of forget that the puppeteers are even there, but even for that audience member who likes focusing on anything that is not the main event: the puppeteers are just as much a part of Kong as the fabric that he's constructed of. I'll be interested to hear what the public reviews of this show are, once it officially opens.
I don't think I've ever seen a puppet this large before, and I can't believe the magnitude of what it takes to even get it to move. I can only wonder just how much money this puppet must have cost to produce, and the engineering that must have gone into creating it. Shows like this are what makes theater truly great, and helps it compete with films. When you see a movie you know that what you're seeing isn't real, and you know that to create it someone sat behind a computer for a countless number of hours designing the beast. While fantastic from a technical standpoint, CGI characters make it difficult for the audience to connect, which is why these creatures are often seen as something "cool" rather than an actual character. The amazing thing about theater is that it can take those CGI characters and make them real and tangible on stage, with real emotions and real people behind it. This makes those creatures feel real, and the audience is able to really connect with them in a deeper way than they were able to connect with it's on screen counterpart.
There have been a lot of articles recently about the puppet used in King Kong. I think what this creative team is doing is historic. They are using such a specific style of theatre that has been used for century’s with puppet work and combining that with 2018 technology. They have a separate company of actors are play the puppet. The company of actors have to become one to truly understand how to become the puppet. I wonder how much of an impact war horse had on creating this show. I think that they were able to see that actors embodying these animals and knew it would work. Im really interested in knowing how the stage management team is going to have understudy rehearsals for kong without having all of them there. For example if they have a cast replacement will they have the whole kong team come in so the one person can learn the track? Im so excited to see this show.
That’s amazing that we have the skills and technology to create a two-story tall King Kong. I would have loved to have observed the design and building process. I also think that it’s so cool that they are bringing puppetry to the Broadway stage. I know it’s been popular in the past, but at this large of a scale it’s going to be incredible. It must be amazing to work with such talented puppeteers. The whole thing must have been a learning experience, both for the actors and the production team. From the perspective of stage management, I wonder how rehearsals worked, especially blocking. I imagine that blocking couldn’t have been done for King Kong without the actual puppet and even then, they wouldn’t have been able to rehearse with that until they loaded into the theater because of the crane needed to lift him. The entire rehearsal process must’ve been exciting and challenging and I’d love to talk/learn from somebody who was a part of that.
Wowee that's a big puppet. As I'm prepping for Zemire et Azor, which has a huge beast puppet standing in as Azor, I can't help but wonder how they handled this in the rehearsal room. If King Kong is two stories tall, did they have a puppet in rehearsal at all? Did they have a smaller puppet, so that the operators could get a feel for it, or was the full, huge puppet in rehearsal and they just worked in an enormous space? How was the puppet stored outside of rehearsal? Did they keep it with all of the other rehearsal furniture and props, or was it stored in a larger, separate storage unit? I also wonder how the actors learned to interact with him. If it was a simplified, smaller puppet for rehearsal, I'm sure it didn't have the level of facial expression that the full scale Broadway puppet has. Puppet design is really crazy and intricate, and I can't imagine the level of design and troubleshooting that went into a puppet of this size and weight.
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