Handspring Puppet Company is a South African puppetry company founded in Cape Town in 1981, best known for building the life-size horses in the stage production of War Horse.
The horses are the reference point
Each Joey is operated by three performers in full view of the audience — two inside the body working the legs and breathing, one at the head controlling the neck and ears — with all three also producing the animal’s sound. Nothing is hidden. Audiences weep at a visible mechanism made of cane and fabricFabric is the outer surface of a puppet — the skin, the cl... More.
Where the technique comes from
The company cites Japanese bunrakuBunraku is the classical Japanese puppet theatre in which th... and the Bamana puppeteers of Mali as direct influences. Three operators sharing one figure is a bunraku structure applied to a Western stage, which is a good illustration of why the traditional entries in this glossary are not decorative history.
Construction
Adrian Kohler designs and builds; Basil Jones produces. The horses are built from cane, aluminium, leather and fabric, engineered to carry a rider while remaining light enough to be manipulated for a full performance. Breathing is built into the mechanism, because a body that does not breathe reads as dead.
The work is not all spectacle
Ubu and the Truth Commission, Woyzeck on the Highveld and Faustus in Africa — several made with the artist William Kentridge — deal with apartheid, testimony and political violence.
War Horse
premiered at London’s Royal National Theatre in 2007 and won a Tony Award for its puppet design in 2011.
Kohler’s own formulation of the whole craft: puppets have to try to be alive.