When South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company came across the Sogolon Puppet Company of Bamako, Mali, five years ago it was only a question of time before they would realise a collaborative project. Sogolon master puppeteer Yaya Coulibaly describes their unique synergy in Í as ‘two lungs with one heart”.
Watching the production is to experience one of those rare moments where an extraordinarily ambitious and precarious concept comes together with beauty and sensitivity.
We have Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of Handspring drawing on a range of traditions from Japan to the Czech and Slovakian Republics, creating sophisticated post-modern Western European theatre pieces such as Ubu and the Truth Commission and Confessions of Zeno with their trademark puppet machines.
Finding inspiration in Bamana and Bozo traditions they join forces with Sogolon, whose ritual puppetry is still fused with important social functions within village life (puppets are believed to contain the spirit of the tree from which they are carved). The result is a richly textured work where diverse traditions support rather than distract from the overall performance.
The success of the work lies in large part to having found the right vehicle: the true story of a giraffe on a diplomatic mission in 1827, captured in Sudan and sent by Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, as a gift to Charles X in Paris — an epic 7 000km journey over land and sea. Thousands thronged the streets to see the astonishing creature and the young Gustave Eiffel was inspired by the giraffe when he designed his tower.
The puppets are visually exciting works of art. There are Malian castelets with golden horns and sweeping grass skirts, habitable figures carried on the head and rod puppets. The 7m-tall giraffe puppet — operated by two men on stilts — is the crowning achievement, its expressive and life-like movements filling the audience with the same awe and admiration that infused the 19th-century French.
The sensitivity of Benin choreographer Koffi Kùkù produces moments of grace and beauty. At work throughout is the deft directorial hand of Marthinus Basson. His breadth of vision and imaginative grasp of the project allows the story and the puppets to disassemble and reassemble seamlessly. Jaco Brouwers’s graphic animations projected on the backdrop effectively transform the setting as the characters journey through the changing landscape.
The only criticism is that the story stalls occasionally and is somewhat repetitive. The fault, I believe, lies with the voices of the puppeteers, who are not as technically proficient as a cast of good actors, the pasha being the exception.
The geopolitical significance of the work is its proud reclamation of the influence of Africa on the West as told from an African perspective. By kicking off the story in a museum, the work sets out to establish the rich source of inspiration, spiritual and aesthetic relief Africa has historically provided to Europe. In the upcoming tour I hope they will take that continent by storm.
Tall Horse is showing at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town, until September 18; at the State Theatre in Pretoria from September 22 to October 2; and at Dance Factory in Johannesburg, from October 6 to 9