PUPPETS
ON THE STREETS
Watch out, there’s a puppet about!
Dorothy Max Prior sees The Sultan’s Elephant and
reflects on the power of large-scale puppetry in public spaces
The
first lovely summer’s day of 2006, a sparkling Friday
in early May, and I am at a reception in London’s Pall
Mall. The occasion is the Independent Street Arts Network
launch of the UK season of street arts events, and we are
kicking off with a big one – in fact, the biggest. For
this day has been chosen as it coincides with The Sultan’s
Elephant, a four-day event presented by French company Royal
de Luxe which sees the closure of much of central London to
make way for an extraordinary piece of outdoor art. And the
extent to which this event has been embraced and accommodated
by the capital city is a landmark occasion; not least because
it is art, not sport or royalty, which is bringing in the
crowds and literally stopping the traffic – producers
Artichoke have somehow pulled off miracles which include the
exclusion of cars from Trafalgar Square and The Mall (usually
only the Queen gets this honour) and the removal of traffic
lights along the main routes.
And who is all this in honour of? Well, now you ask –
two puppets! For although much has been made (quite rightly)
of this event as a seminal moment in the history of UK street
arts presentation, it must also be noted as a marvellous milestone
for puppetry.
As we leave the reception and head for the sunshine and crowds
outside, we learn that one of those puppets has already taken
up occupation, in fact has been resident in the city since
the previous evening. A giant – no, that’s not
a big enough word – a ginormous mechanical elephant
is snoozing in Horseguard’s Parade off Whitehall (the
large square where the Trooping of the Colour takes place).
This is The Sultan’s Elephant, a creature big enough
to accommodate a house (and indeed there are balconies and
windows in his side – the design apparently inspired
by the Town Hall in Calais). As he slumbers you can see the
movement of his breath: there is no off-stage in this show
– everything that happens over the four days can be
viewed by the public and as much attention is paid to the
elephant’s sleeping time as any other aspect of his
existence. His ears are my favourite part: great flaps of
brown leather that move gently and organically.
Meanwhile, back at Pall Mall, in Waterloo Place to be precise,
something, we are told, is about to happen…
Embedded in the road is a crashed space-rocket pod, a brown
wood-and-metal container that has an egg-like quality. The
tarmac is cracked, the pod sitting at a rakish angle. There’s
a curtained porthole in the pod suggesting that something
or someone is in there. We hear the sound of loud music coming
from a distance, intensifying as a large truck-cum-carnival-float
appears from around the corner. A frisson of excitement passes
through the crowd, who look to the pod in expectation.
Although I know (an ‘in my head’ sort of knowing)
what is going to happen next, I’m not prepared for the
impact. What enfolds before my eyes is one of the purest proofs
of the power of puppetry that I have ever witnessed (and am
ever likely to, I’m sure). A large team of manipulators
dressed in jaunty red jackets approach the pod; there’s
an overhead crane and a tall ladder goes up against the pod.
A hatch is opened, a manipulator disappears inside and the
crane and pulleys crank into action, pulling the lid open.
From the pod Le Petit Géant rises up, a girl puppet
in a green dress and white ankle socks who, although she towers
above the crowd, has an air of gentle childhood innocence
that keeps her firmly placed as a ‘little’ girl.
She has black hair that moves gently in the breeze, and enormous
eyes that slowly close and open, her beautiful eyelashes sweeping
down and up. She takes a while to find herself in this strange
new territory, looking over the gathered crowd with a slow
turn of the head, her eyes seeming to come into clear focus
as she takes in her surroundings. The machinery – cranes,
wires, ropes, pulleys – is fully visible. The large
number of manipulators are clearly in sight above, behind
and around her. There is no attempt to hide the business of
animating this giant marionette, yet she is alive. We believe
with total conviction, and our hearts reach out to her. All
eyes in the large crowd are drawn to hers, and it seems that
everyone feels, as I do, that they have made personal contact
with an extraordinary being.
Now the girl sets off; down Pall Mall towards Trafalgar Square
she goes, left right left right, accompanied by her team of
operators (some of whom have to walk backwards) and the carnival
music-makers on the truck. She’s off to meet The Sultan’s
Elephant.
I decide I want to be with the elephant when she arrives to
meet him, so nip through the edge of St James’ Park
to his enclosure. The park is full of happy people looking
towards the elephant with smiles on their faces. How extraordinary
to have this relaxed festival atmosphere in the capital, it
feels more like Spain than England! The Sultan’s Elephant
is up and about – as I approach I’m shocked by
his height. I’d seen the pictures but somehow had no
idea what 40-foot of puppet pachyderm looks like when it’s
in front of you, trumpeting loudly. Each enormous leg has
a little box-seat in which an operator sits. There are people
on the balconies in the elephant’s side.
Who knows how many people it takes to keep this creature on
the road? The elephant walks in a great circle around the
enclosure; every so often the head goes back, the trunk is
raised and a great shower of water jets towards the crowd
who all squeal like excited children in a birthday party splash-pool.
The pounding music heralds the arrival of Le Petit Géant,
and around the corner she comes. The moment of meeting and
greeting between the two is poignant and gently amusing as
the elephant’s enormous trunk at first tentatively sniffs
the newcomer, then envelops the girl in a loving hug…
The presenting company, Royal de Luxe, were hardly known in
Britain until this fabulous event in May, but are a renowned
company with an extraordinary body of work to their name.
Founded in 1979 by director Jean Luc Courcoult, they have
performed in front of thousands of spectators throughout Europe
and in Africa and China. The Sultan’s Elephant, which
premiered in France in 2005, is the fifth of these spectacular
shows, all of which involve giant puppet figures. This latest
show was inspired by the work of Jules Verne: ‘His were
the only novels I stole from bookshops’ claimed Courcoult
in an interview with Jean-Christophe Planche.
The shows share a simple premise – an animal or giant
arrives in town and lives its life, going about its business
for a few days. An earlier example is Les Chasseurs de Girafes,
in which a big box appears, and after a day or so opens to
reveal a mother and baby giraffe. The power of each show is
in universal human emotions which are evoked by the extraordinary
skills of the animators in operating the mechanical people
and creatures, and in the interactions that take place between
passers-by and puppets. The dynamic of each event is similar,
in that it starts quietly and slowly, with (hopefully) no
spoiler publicity in the host town media (rumour has it that
there was some disquiet in the Royal de Luxe camp about the
too-detailed coverage with images in the UK broadsheets on
the first full day of the London appearance). And the word
then spreads… And so the show builds over the four days
or so of occupation – the culmination of each show in
effect created by the audience momentum, the numbers of which
swell with each passing day.
That the shows are free and on the streets is an important
factor to Courcoult: ‘I am proud that the shows we produce
are financed by taxes’ he says, ‘it seems fitting
and beautiful that some tax money is dedicated to popular
culture. By putting on the show in the public arena and free
of charge I can reach people as they are, whereas in traditional
theatres you only meet those who have dared cross the threshold.’
This philosophy is one that seems very much in keeping with
many other artists and companies who have chosen to create
large-scale puppetry performance on the streets. An English
company who espoused that same philosophy for the almost-four-decades
of their existence is Welfare State International, who are
sadly shutting up shop in 2006. Unlike Royal de Luxe, who
we could say make work which is intrinsically political in
its very existence in public spaces, rather than engaging
with overtly political subject matter, Welfare State (founded
in 1968) stated its intention from the start as an endeavour
predicated on ‘participatory socialism’ (director
John Fox, quoted in his autobiography Eyes on Stalks) and
they often chose to meet politics head-on in shows such as
Raising The Titanic (performed at LIFT 1983) which Fox described
in the above-mentioned book as ‘ a ritualised rejection
of Western capitalism.’
Although WSI made their mark with the creation of this and
similar large-scale static spectacles, which famously incorporated
giant animated structures and pyrotechnics, another vital
strand of their work has been the re-inventing of the Northern
European carnival traditions of lantern walks and processions,
using giant sculptural puppets and structures made of withies
(hazel sticks) and tissue paper lit from within – a
wonderful reinterpretation of the humble paper lanterns that
German and French children carry along in procession for the
Martinmas festival of early winter.
The far-reaching influence of Welfare State, and specifically
their effect upon large-scale puppetry and animation within
UK street arts, cannot be fully catalogued: an enormous number
of emerging artists worked with them as makers and/or performers,
and many of these have gone off to form companies who have
also made a significant contribution. A few names from the
Welfare family tree: Julian Crouch, who went on to form Improbable,
their outdoor show Sticky being a wonderful example of large-scale
object animation (in their case, using Sellotape!); Les Sharpe
who formed London’s finest Emergency Exit Arts, who
have taken up the challenge of creating large-scale processional
work – their Runga Rung, incidentally, also features
a giant elephant; the Brighton-based celebratory theatre company
Same Sky who sprung from the Welfare loins and took lantern
festivals into a new dimension with their Burning the Clocks
winter solstice event.
Welfare State’s own starting points go back to 1965,
when John Fox first saw Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet
Theatre, who had been brought from America to the UK by Oval
House to enact A Man Says Goodbye to his Mother. Seeing this
anti-war show acted out on a grey and drizzly south London
street corner, Fox had his epiphany moment: ‘It was
the trigger that inspired me to start Welfare State International.’
Bread and Puppet Theatre, who originally plied their trade
in New York City before decamping to rural Vermont, can be
seen as the dada and mama of large-scale puppetry in the streets.
Although their work included work of many different scales,
and although (as in the above mentioned show that inspired
John Fox) they made work that was presented as, in Schumann’s
words ‘stationary agitational puppet shows’ and
street interventions, it is their large-scale parades, most
of which had a political motivation, for which they are most
renowned.
In an essay called Louder Than Traffic, John Bell (who performed
with the company) says: ‘Bread and Puppet Theatre has
been a distinct, unique presence in twentieth-century American
theatre because of its grounding in three consistent ideas:
an embrace of puppet and mask theatre… an explicit acceptance
of political content… a persistent desire to operate
outside the strictures of commercial entertainment…’
Big characters on stilts (often satirical representations,
such as a 12-foot-tall Uncle Sam), great painted banners in
bold blacks and reds, giant skeleton puppets, skull masks,
carnivalesque giant papier-mâché heads…
these were employed in anti-Vietnam War demos and anti-nuclear
events, then later at pro-community gardens parades and celebratory
Halloween processions. For Schumann, the reclaiming of public
spaces was an essential part of the work: ‘I decided
to take my painting and sculpture into the street and make
a social event out of it and out of that grew my puppet theatre.’
Like many artists who have followed in their path, Bread and
Puppet Theatre’s choice of puppet, mask and strong visual
imagery has been crucial to their choice to perform in the
streets rather than in theatres and other dedicated arts spaces.
A trip to any major UK street arts festival will show that
this heritage is alive and well and manifesting itself in
many different ways: from the whole-body-mask style of Bim
Mason’s Big Heads walkabouts and Neighbourhood Watch
International’s enormous Dali and Gala ‘balloon
people’ stilt-walkers to Horse+Bamboo’s banners,
flags and large-headed puppets to Whalley Range All Stars
giant Pig with suckling piglets (audience members who poke
their heads inside the Pig, wearing wiggly piggy tails). And
there’s more, so much more…
Over to Peter Schumann once again:
‘Puppet theatre is the theatre of all means. Puppets
and masks should be played in the street. They are louder
than the traffic… they scream and dance and hit others
on the head and display life in its clearest terms.’
Whether it’s the dancing skeletons of Bread and Puppet
parading down the streets, the magnificent withie-and-tissue
creatures of Welfare’s lantern parades sailing across
the skies, or the gentle giants and animals of Royal de Luxe’s
magical world emerging from corners of our public squares
to enchant passers-by, puppets on the street have a unique
role to play in the creation of a theatre that is genuinely
egalitarian, that is political in its very existence, regardless
of whether artists take a consciously political stance, and
which does indeed, in so many varied and beautiful ways, display
life in its clearest terms.
The Sultan’s Elephant will next appear in Antwerp (Belgium)
6 – 9 July and then in Calais at the end of September
and Le Havre at the end of October. The quotes from Jean Luc
Courcoult are taken from an interview with Jean-Christophe
Planche (2005) which can be found at www.thesultanselephant.com
John Fox quotes are taken from Eyes on Stalks, Fox J (Methuen
2002) www.methuen.co.uk
See this issue of
Animations for a commentary on the last ever gig by Welfare
State International
Peter Schumann and John Bell quotes are taken from the essay
Louder Than Traffic by John Bell, which appeared in Radical
Street Performance ed. Cohen-Cruz J (Routledge London 1998)
www.routledge.com
To find out more about UK street arts festivals and events,
see www.streetartsnetwork.org.uk
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