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Armoured bears and daemons prove the power of puppetry
Be it the enormous armoured bears that roam the North Pole or the tiny Gallivespian spies in the service of Lord Asriel, the books of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy are full of fantastical creatures of all shapes and sizes.
It's been the task of Blind Summit Theatre company, working with Birmingham Rep artistic director Rachel Kavanaugh, to bring these beings to life for the stage, with puppet director Mark Down and puppet designer Nick Barnes.
Over the last 12 years, Blind Summit Theatre's puppets have appeared in such shows as Anthony Minghella's version of Madama Butterfly for English National Opera, as well as their own self-penned touring works like family show The Spaceman and the black comedy Low Life.
His Dark Materials is the biggest production they've worked on to date, not just in terms of the combined length of the two plays, but also in the physical scale of some of the puppets.
"We've made puppets of eight polar bears, the Gallivespians and most of the daemons that are in the story," says Down.
"We haven't made puppets of every daemon because the whole ethos of this production is to try and do more with less. We sketched out some ideas, made cardboard cut-outs and experimented with different ways to move them at first, but it's still difficult turning your ideas on paper into something that actually works. The polar bears are life-sized suits that the actors wear with two poles to move the head. The daemons are one-man operated puppets with handles at either end to move the head and body. It can be quite tricky for the actors playing the polar bears because they have to learn how to work within the suit rather than against it, while the people operating the daemons have to run around the stage crouched at half-height for the whole play!"
The West Yorkshire Playhouse is the final destination of the UK tour of Pullman's epic fantasy.
Adapted from Pullman's acclaimed trilogy by Nicholas Wright, this magical adventure follows heroes Lyra and Will through worlds both familiar and unknown, across icy landscapes ruled by armoured bears and through the skies with armies of witches and angels.
Lyra, along with her daemon Pantalaimon, lives in Oxford. Not the Oxford of this earth but that of a parallel world, where the souls of humans are visible and other worlds are seen in the stars.
When she and best friend Rodger eavesdrop on Lord Asriel arguing with religious authorities about the mysterious "dust", little do they know that an adventure as far reaching as the Republic of Heaven is about to unfold.
When Rodger disappears, taken by the child-snatching Gobblers, Lyra promises to find him and her daring quest begins. Chased across worlds by the cruel Mrs Coulter whose determination to preserve the innocent comes with the highest of costs, Lyra's courage and determination lead her into extraordinary danger and her journey stretches further than rescuing her friend.
Down adds: "The language of this play is also the language of puppets – the concept that something can also become something else – which also fits in with the ideas of moving between worlds in the books, where everything's transmutable. Seeing something you've loved coming to life is a real adventure for the audience."
West Yorkshire Playhouse, May 28 to June 20.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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