The Good Chance team behind The Jungle, the celebrated dramatisation of refugee life in Calais, is teaming up with the creators of the War Horse puppets to present an adventurous work that will last from April to July next year.
Thursday, October 08, 2020
Giant refugee puppet to walk from Syria to UK in public art event
The Good Chance team behind The Jungle, the celebrated dramatisation of refugee life in Calais, is teaming up with the creators of the War Horse puppets to present an adventurous work that will last from April to July next year.
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7 comments:
This is such a wonderful idea. I really love the use of puppetry to bring awareness to global issues like the struggles of refugees. This is such a huge problem in our world, yet it does not get nearly the attention it deserves. Hopefully this movement will bring more light to the situation. This is such an ambitious project too. I have never heard of a puppet walking so far before, which I think is really amazing. Normally you think of these projects as being really isolated and contained to one theater or location, but something like this can broaden the scope and the impact of this art in an unprecedented way. The power of puppetry is a really powerful tool, and I love to hear about people using it in incredible ways to promote the messages they want to share. Honestly, the idea of being a part of a puppetry troop walking across Europe seems like a pretty great way to spend a few months. Can’t wait to see how this goes!
I absolutely love this idea. Anything with puppetry is so interesting to me, it’s stuck a neat medium. I am interested to know who the team is who will be controlling her during her walk. What is really heartwarming to me is how so many artists are uniting to make this happen. So many cities, theaters and individual artists will be a part of this, and a poppet master even came out of retirement in order to work on it! I think the other art that she interacts with in Rome and France will also be very impactful. I think the messsage behind this piece is very important. I know a lot of European countries have been overwhelmed with refugees from Syria in the recent decade and it’s still prevent ant and will help a lot of people more deeply understand the distress and the loneliness of being a refugee child. This is the kind of art that really inspires people to act and I’m very excited to see it happen next year.
I have a lot of questions. Is it a literal walk? Will the puppet be puppeted across 4,971 miles? Is she waterproof? What kind of maintenance does it require, and how will it be accomplished? How much will it cost, and where is the funding coming from? Are they concerned about safety and security? Is there a backup puppet? Does the puppet play prerecorded sound, is it silent, or do the puppeteers speak? How does she tell her story (or does she tell it at all)? How will the border crossings work (will it not be a problem because they will mostly be in the EU)? Large scale puppets are a long tradition in some parts of Europe. Are they also in the Middle East? Does it matter? I think giant puppets are a really cool way to attract attention on the street, and I wish we could do something like this in the U.S., but I think the puppet would probably be defaced or destroyed pretty quickly if it left major cities.
I think it’s interesting to consider the structure and the size of this refugee child puppet. Thinking about some of the puppet theory of John Bell in his book Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects, the size of the performing object and the operators of the object directly affect how the audience interacts and connects to the object as a living thing. A puppet similar in size to a human creates more familiarity between the two parties, so the size of Amal makes me think about how she creates a potentially intimidating power dynamic between herself and the people around her. The placement of the three operators also influences the dynamic between the performing object and the audience. Since one of the operators is hidden within the Amal, she has some autonomy in the eyes of the audience. Yet the two operators on the outside show the audience that the performing object is controlled and supported by another force. It creates an interesting dynamic as a performance object, and I’d be curious to see what is the audience’s reaction to or reflection of the impact Amal has in her performances.
I have disliked puppets from a very young age, always uncomfortable with their striking human likeness, but I think Little Amal’s human likeness is what will make this project so impactful. Oftentimes we avoid uncomfortable topics (like the refugee crisis and how little we are doing to fix it) until they are put right in front of us and we can not avoid them and I think this is the impact the project will have as it travels. In addition to the impact of Little Amal, I think the specific installations within each city will hopefully be effective in promoting conversation around the refugee crisis. It is also very cool to see that Handspring Puppet Company is involved in the project, as I have done a lot of research on the company for productions I have worked on, and clearly their work is of the highest quality.
It’s pretty crazy that they’ll have a puppet travel nearly 5,000 miles across multiple countries for this, and I’m curious as to how well she’ll hold up throughout the trek. I also think it’s cool that the puppet is low tech and is operated by three different people. I do wish they’d included more images of the mechanics or the insides of the puppet, or a video of her walking in this article. My one thought is that for the person inside, it would get pretty tiring pretty quickly wouldn’t it? They said that it operates like a stilt-walker, and from my past experiences with stilts, the added weight and maneuvering is much more draining that your average walking. Overall I think this is a pretty interesting and inventive idea to help bring people into the conversation about refugees and what they go through. It’ll be interesting to see how this goes and hopefully they make it to where they want to be.
Okay this puppet is so cool and also is such a wonderful idea for a piece. It’s really great to see artists using a unique art form like puppetry which I think most people have a confined idea of what it actually is and break that to share a message with the rest of the world. I really hope this journey brings more attention to the refugee crisis and it spreads involvement and awareness along its journey. The project itself also seems very ambitious traveling across Europe like that with a puppet of that scale and stature I’m sure presents many unusual and daunting challenges. Ultimately I thinks that that is apart of the message however showing the troubles of the journey and just how much it takes to not only take it but take that leap of faith to do so. I really hope to see more projects like this going forward especially with artists changing efforts during these times.
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