Leah and I visited the Victoria Albert museum a couple days before the group today. This was because we met up with her childhood best friend and she was kind enough to pay for our tickets for the Fashioning Masculinities exhibit. It was a great exhibit which challenged the idea of modern masculinity and the wardrobe of men. It was an exploration of fashion over the decades and how society views affected what was worn, along with religious views.
The exhibit I want to compare to a piece of theatre we have seen is the War Horse puppet to the play Life Of Pi and their work. First, the exhibit. The piece itself was a life-like and full scale horse puppet that was used in the production of War Horse that performed in over 1600 shows at the National Theatre. The show horse officially retired from the production in March of 2013. The horse itself is constructed from an Aluminum frame, cane wood, waxed twine and many other materials. The most interesting materials being bicycle brake levers and car seat belts! It takes three people to operate this ginormous puppet. They are labeled as the head, the heart, and the hind respectively. They perform in the same way as the Life of Pi puppers; the actors are fully visible but the attention is always on the animal rather than the actors.
The puppetry in Life Of Pi was the greatest I had ever seen. I write this fully knowing the second best puppetry I have witnessed was that one time my younger cousin put on a great sock puppet extravaganza. But I digress. Even though I dont have the experience of seeing other puppets, I can still imagine how the warhorse would have felt on the stage. Its breathing, naying, braying and moving. The tiger, much like the horse, was operated by three actors operating in similar areas. The largest difference being that the tail had its own designated actor.
Theatre in London U of A 