Burger said the exploration of beings that do not easily fit into man-made categories was inspired throughout the show by Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entangled Life”, a book about the ecological importance of lichens.
Among the other creatures, lichen puppets also moved across the stage. Lichens are both fungi and plant species. They are two organisms that live together in what is known as a mixed organism. and it plays a big role in the show.
The bat, lichens and some human-like figures known as “savages” represent the complexity of animal, plant and human life. Burger said that the savages represent that these different categories may in many ways not be as important as the collective. For example, said that humans consist of different microbiomes.
“We ourselves are symphonic, well-orchestrated collaborations, and we just find that deeply fascinating,” said Zimmerman. said. “It inspires a sense of wondrous wonder to think that life works this way – organisms working together to create something bigger than themselves.”
As the owl puppet swept across the stage, the orchestra pit followed; as the bear stood up and towered over the audience, the instruments clanged and the crowd cheered. Bird puppets darted across the stage while real birds chirped through the dense canopy of leaves. As the bat puppet came on stage, a bat soon flew over the heads of the audience. The audience watched in awe.
This collaboration between puppeteers, the orchestra, the narrator, the audience and the wildlife around the theatre is something that Paperhand intern Tuesday Utz believes is crucial for the show as a whole, it said.
Utz animated one of the Wild One puppets after Burger approached him, picking up what she considered her benevolent chaos. Utz designed their mask after being called to do so in a dream.
The boundary between the puppet and the puppeteer is not so big, it said — rather, the puppeteers inform the puppets they create and animate, and at the same time take on the puppet’s energy. For this reason, said that breathwork is really important for Paperhands puppeteers. Without the support of their puppets’ breath, the puppets are, in a sense, flat and no longer live with the puppeteer.
“I only breathe as well as my neighbor next to me,” they say said“And when we take those unifying breaths before the show, it grounds us in our bodies. It grounds us in our connection to one another.”
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