Tall Horse A part of the 2005 Next Wave Festival Directed by Marthinus Basson Written by Khephra Burns Puppet design by Yaya Coulibaly and Adrian Kohler October 5, 2005 7:30PM Written by Erin Mallay and Caroline Smith

So a horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” And the horse says, “Uh, actually, I’m a giraffe.” Just kidding.

But a man did walk into a museum and the curator asked him, “Are you looking for something?” and the man replied, “Yes, I’m looking for my ancestor.”

Tall Horse is the story of Atir, the sought after ancestor and native African who was charged with the delivery of a very special gift from the Pasha of Egypt to the King of France. The gift was a giraffe and it made the two year journey from Africa to Europe, through the French countryside towards its new home in Paris. It captivated those who had never before seen or heard of the mythical, magical creature with an awe only matched by that of the audience’s audible signs when the sixteen foot puppet giraffe made its first appearance on BAM’s stage.

It’s a story saturated with political history of the period and the complicated international relations between East and West and Europe and Africa. But the story doesn’t do the performance any justice. Stories provide structure, but this time the puppets gave it life. If your only experience with puppetry is Lion King or Sesame Street then you’re missing out on an art form fraught with history, culture, and an incomparable earthy aesthetic. Tall Horse is collaboration between South Africa’s troupe, Handspring Company, and Mali’s troupe, Sogolon Company--two countries where puppetry is a prominent art form.

Tall Horse is everything that New York theater is missing. Once you have bought into the whole experience and have invested yourself in the lives of the puppets, your world has been rocked. Sure, the puppets were manipulated by actors but you come to realize that puppetry is a selfless endeavor. A puppet must struggle to live and therefore, there is a complete surrendering on the part of the performers. They forsake all self-consciousness in favor of the life of the puppet. Generally, the puppets were operated by more than one actor and it was astonishing to see all egos cast aside.

The act of manipulating a puppet is in constant flux between the raw mechanics of moving parts and the eloquence and grace of a delicate ballet, between carefully calculated choreography and the gut instincts of performers moving as one force. The cooperation of puppeteers moves in and out of the forefront of the performance; there are moments of total amazement at the sheer scale of the characters—like the Pasha that seems to take up the entire theatre and leave little room for the three puppeteers or three other performers that supplemented his presence, even beneath the folds of his regal attire. But perhaps more amazing was the tiny infant giraffe that owed its slight and fragile animation to no less than three puppeteers that seemed to be more caregivers than lifegivers. Juxtaposed with these marvels of carved wood and collaged fabric was the humble King Charles of France, embodied by a puppet that rested on the chest of a single puppeteer, sharing body and breath, amalgamated into a single being.

When you watch a puppet, every gesture is precious; the fluidity of footwork or slight turning of a head, had it absentmindedly been executed by a single actor on stage, suddenly became precisely poetic, important and breathtaking coming from the puppet.

This production was grand without being ostentatious, impressive but never boastful. The rustic craftsmanship of the puppets suited BAM’s exposed brick walls. Moreover, the show’s overall rejection of a garish Broadway décor was utterly refreshing. It was a performance that toyed with scale in ways unprecedented by other stage mediums. For instance, there was no definable “set” that theatergoers recognized immediately. The sixteen-foot tall giraffe quieted those commonplace needs.

In “short,” on an unassuming Wednesday evening we walked into BAM Theater and took our seats like “tall” New Yorkers we think we are. But as that creature demurely took the stage in all its glory, we shrunk and sighed like kittens.

BAM Harvey Theater / 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
Oct 4-8, 2005 at 7:30pm; Oct 9 at 3pm