Latest news with #puppetry
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
"Life of Pi" Drama Debuts in Hong Kong in June
From the novel and film, stepping into the West Kowloon Cultural District's Xiqu Centre, combining exquisite puppetry and magical theater, sweeping multiple international theater awards. HONG KONG, May 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ --The original London West End production of *Life of Pi*, which has garnered five Laurence Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards, will be presented in Hong Kong for the first time by China Foreign Cultural Affairs Group Ltd. The performances will take place at the Grand Theatre of the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) from June 26 to 29. Audiences can now purchase tickets for this Hong Kong engagement through various platforms, with prices starting at a limited $288, allowing them to experience this 'theatre miracle' that transcends the pages of the book and the screen! Details of "Life of Pi" Drama "Life of Pi" - The Original London West End DramaDate: 26 June 2025 (Thursday) to 29 June 2025 (Sunday)Afternoon Session: 2:30pm (28 & 29 June)Evening Time Scene: 7:30pm (26, 27, 28 & 29 June)Venue: Grand Theatre, Xiqu Centre, WKCD (88 Austin Road West, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon)Tickets: $1188, $988, $888, $688, $588, $288Concessionary prices for full-time students, senior citizens aged 60 or above (A/$832, B/$692, C/$622, D/$482) Purchase of regular-price tickets is subject to the presentation of a valid identity document upon admission. Tickets of the original London West End production of "Life of Pi" Drama are currently available for purchase through the official website of the Hong Kong West Kowloon Cultural District Theatre Centre, Cityline, Art-mate, Pop-ticket, Damai and Gewara. Official Ticketing Website: Ang Lee's Oscar-winning film of the same name has received numerous international awards. The original philosophical fable, Life of PI, has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since its release in 2001 and won the Booker Prize in 2002. The 2012 film adaptation, directed by Ang Lee, garnered four Oscars. In 2019, this legendary classic was brought to life in a theatrical production by the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, UK. This reinterpretation introduced a new dimension to the art of theatre, transitioning from paperback and cinema to the prestigious West End theatres in London. The production achieved unparalleled success, winning five Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards for Best New Play, Best Choreography, and Best Lighting Design. Additionally, it received five British Drama Awards and the WhatsOnStage Awards for Best New Play, solidifying its status as the most successful play of its kind in London. It has earned recognition as the undisputed 'dark horse' of the theatre scene. A widely acclaimed masterpiece, it has received five-star reviews from major media outlets in both the UK and the US. The New York Times described it as a "It's a wonder! life of pi delivers magic. the roaring you hear at the show's end is the sound of a standing ovation.", The Times praised, "The puppetry, from Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes, is breathtaking". There were numerous positive comments on social media, with one user declaring it "the ultimate theatre experience that makes your brain dizzy, your heart beat wildly, and your soul tremble." This is undoubtedly proof that *The Fantastic Adventures of Young Pi* is not only a masterpiece of art but also a journey that connects human emotions. Stage Magic, Puppetry, and an Unmatched Immersive Experience One of the most remarkable aspects of the play "Life of PI" is the innovative puppetry that brings various animal characters to life, including the Bengal tiger Richard Parker, hyenas, orangutans, and zebras. Under the skilled control of three puppeteers, every breath and movement of the puppets is infused with wildness and vitality. The *Guardian* newspaper in the UK praised the performance, and the audience echoed this sentiment, stating, three puppeteers made the tiger so wild and spiritual that I even forgot it was a puppet! puppeteers to become the first to win an Olivier Award, marking a significant milestone in the history of theatre. Through a multi-layered dynamic setup and high-precision projection technology, the vastness of the ocean is realistically recreated on stage. Light and shadow simulate the movement of the sea, the dinghy bobbing in the enormous waves, the movement of fish, and the galaxy in the night sky. This creates a stunning audiovisual experience that immerses the audience, making them feel as though they are struggling alongside the protagonist, Pi, in the stormy Pacific Ocean and sharing in his fantastical journey. A Stage Miracle That Transcends Both Page and Screen The story of Pi, a young Indian boy who loses his family in a shipwreck and shares a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, along with other animals, exemplifies the essence of the original narrative. In this confined space, Pi faces a race against time to survive, weaving a tale that blends fantasy with reality. Through the ingenious use of a dual narrative—rich with fantastical animal fables while confronting the harsh and brutal truths of human nature—the film immerses the audience in Pi's inner world. It poignantly portrays his struggle and growth in a desperate situation, prompting viewers to gain a deeper understanding of self-identity and the meaning of survival. Additionally, it encourages the audience to reflect on these profound themes. Art Feast Brings Light to the Cultural Landscape of the Greater Bay Area The Hong Kong leg of 'The Fantastic Drift of Young Pi' is produced by China External Culture Group Limited and operated by Beijing One World Culture Communications Co., Ltd. , a content company of China Performing Arts Theatre Line, which is a subsidiary of China Performing Arts Theatre Line. The Hong Kong leg of 'The Fantastic Drift of Young Pi', which has been touring the world since 2023, spreads all over North America, and then embarks on its journey to Asia, with Hong Kong as one of the stops, not only creating a major event for the Hong Kong art scene, but also providing an opportunity for the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau Bay Area to celebrate the cultural landscape. It has not only created a major event in Hong Kong's art scene, but also injected new vigour into the art market of the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Greater Bay Area. Whether you are touched by the philosophical ideas of the novel, shocked by the visual impact of the film, or are encountering the story for the first time, you should come to the WKCD Centre from 26 to 29 June to face life's choices together with 'Pi' through this drama, and experience a magical journey intertwined with emotions and philosophical ideas. About Beijing One World Culture Communications Co., Ltd. Beijing One World Culture Communications Co., Ltd. is the content division of the China Performing Arts Theatre Line, operating under China Foreign Culture Group Co., Ltd. The company is primarily responsible for the introduction, production, operation, and marketing of theatrical content. It is also one of the earliest organizations in the country to engage in the commercialization of arts and cultural performances. Since 2008, the company has been fully committed to the development of China's musical theatre industry. It has signed a series of world-renowned productions, including classic musicals adapted into Chinese. The company has successfully produced and promoted Chinese versions of these musicals, touring dozens of cities across the country. From 2015 onwards, the company introduced and operated original Broadway versions of world-class musicals, such as Phantom of the Opera, the Tony Award-winning epic musical, and participated in the Chinese productions of other notable musical theatre projects. Download images: Media enquiry: Yannis Wong 5593 6199 Official Ticketing Website: View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Beijing One World Culture Communications Co., Ltd.
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Children's theatre company Cahoots: ‘We've been playing 3,500-seat venues – and filling them. It was a whole new experience'
On the ground floor of a busy Belfast shopping centre an unobtrusive black door bears the word Cahoots. Go through it and you'll stumble into a world of wonder and imagination, a maze of workshops and rehearsal spaces, costume and props stores and a fully equipped theatre that, between August and the end of this year, will stage four new pieces of work for young audiences. A gallery of photographs and posters on the corridor walls offers a nostalgic trip into the 23-year back catalogue of Cahoots theatre company . Under the boundless imagination of its artistic director and cofounder, Paul McEneaney, the company has produced a vast canon of engaging, visually stunning work for children and families. They don't come much more spectacular than The Vanishing Elephant, conceived by McEneaney and written by the distinguished children's playwright Charles Way. Recently the company has been travelling the east coast of the United States, making a wonderfully lifelike elephant created by the puppeteer Helen Foan disappear in front of 10,000 wide-eyed audience members. At the start of June it will play the prestigious Southbank Centre, in London , and then transfer to the magnificent Buxton Opera House in Derbyshire, the Oxford Playhouse and, in Coventry, the Belgrade Theatre. READ MORE The show had an inauspicious start. During lockdown the company lost a number of its producing partners and the whole enterprise was in danger of falling apart. Cahoots was at a crossroads. But its key partner, the New Victory Theater in New York, remained on board. As a result rehearsals took place in Belfast, the show was shipped across the Atlantic and, in October 2023, it opened on a stage that could accommodate the full scale of its spectacle. A stressful, back-to-front process proved a blessing in disguise. A few days into its opening run, The New York Times hailed the show as its Critic's Pick, a rare accolade for children's theatre. Suddenly, tickets were in huge demand and venues from across the States were queuing up to see it. In the blink of an eye the company's profile went off the scale. 'It was a game changer,' McEneaney says. 'We're just back from playing a circuit that, a few years ago, we could never have dreamed of. We've been playing 3,500-seat venues – and filling them. It was a whole new experience and has opened doors for us right across the country.' Paul McEneaney, Cahoots NI artistic director: 'Children deserve the best actors, writers, designers, composers' The company is currently juggling two big new shows: The Sorceror's Apprentice, in a partnership with the New Victory Theatre and Buxton Opera House, and The Musicians of Bremen Live!, based on the Grimm Brothers' folk tale, a co-production with the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, where some 2,500 people attended its February premiere. McEneaney has come a long way since his childhood in Armagh, when, as a boy magician, his parents drove him around the country to perform at children's birthday parties. 'Even back then I loved that spark you feel when an audience is engaged in a story or a trick or a piece of music or a spoken word,' he says. 'That energy still captivates me. It's the real magic trick. I wish I could bottle the gasp, followed by the moment of silence, when an audience is totally engaged.' His first commission came from Young at Art, which invited him to create something for the 2002 Belfast Children's Festival. The piece was called Buster. McEneaney wrote and performed in it. It was a sign of things to come, the story of a sad old man and a little puppet that came alive under the spell of midnight magic. It was subsequently invited to the Edinburgh International Children's Festival and several other high-profile festivals. Over the years audiences have come to expect from Cahoots work that is visually inventive, tinged with magic and illusion, and driven by a compelling narrative. McEneaney admits he sets out to make work that, as an adult, he would like to see, without changing the perspective merely because the primary target audience is young people. 'Work for young audiences is different in the way that it is funded and perceived within our industry,' he says. 'One of the problems is that it has been viewed as an entry-level sport. I can't tell you how much that frustrates me. Children deserve the best actors, writers, designers, composers. It requires venues to open up their main spaces to children's theatre much more often and for there to be parity of funding with other work. This work is an integral part of the sector, not put into a separate box from the rest. 'I felt it was an injustice that young people couldn't get to see our work except at Christmas. Young audiences make theatres substantial amounts of money at Christmas, so why not programme work for them during the rest of the year?' McEneaney's determination and vision have generated a raft of successful productions, including The Family Hoffmann, performed in a circus tent; The Musician, a children's opera in a collaboration with the composer Conor Mitchell; and adaptations of the books The Amazing Book Eating Boy, by Oliver Jeffers, Under the Hawthorn Tree, by Marita Conlon McKenna, and Death, Duck and the Tulip, by the German author and illustrator Wolf Erlbruch, which dealt with death and the afterlife. Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch, staged by Cahoots McEneaney pinpoints Nivelli's War, the moving story of a Holocaust survivor, as both an artistic landmark and the start of the company's partnership with Way. 'I was directing a piece for the Imagine stage in Bethesda, Maryland, and Charlie was there, working on another piece. We were two people far from home who would go out to eat together of an evening. We had very different approaches to theatre. He was all about the spoken word, and I was very much about the visual. But, instinctively, we knew we wanted to work together. 'He has an extensive knowledge of German culture, and I have a lot of knowledge about magic. I told him about a magician from Berlin called Herbert Levin, who survived Auschwitz by doing tricks in the camp. Having lost his family, he moved to America after the war, changed around the letters in his name and became the Great Nivelli. The show ended up on Broadway and was the first time a really deep, strong narrative and the visual aspect of Cahoots's work had merged in a meaningful way.' Nivelli's War, an artistic landmark and the start of Cahoots's partnership with children's playwright Charles Way Much of the company's work has been in unspoken theatre, relying on mime, visual effects and physical skills to tell the story. One such piece was Egg, which prompted an early breakthrough in the US. 'We were invited to a festival, and by the time we clicked our fingers we'd been offered a four-month tour,' McEneaney says. 'That show resonates even more with me now. I'd been reading a book called Egg and Bird to my son, who was then two. I wrote a non-verbal show about a baby bird growing up and leaving its nest. My son is now 19 and in his first year at university. So it's happened for real.' Egg, a non-verbal show by Paul McEneaney about a baby bird growing up and leaving its nest Penguins, a co-production with Birmingham Rep, was a dance piece about two male penguins caring for an unhatched egg and raising the chick. Made at a time when the subject of same-sex parenting was being widely discussed, it was an example of young people's theatre subtly reflecting what was happening in society. 'We never set out to say to our young audiences, 'This is the message',' McEneaney says. 'We are never preachy or didactic. A message is quietly embedded, then it resurfaces in the car on the way home or around the dinner table. Young people are sponges. They will feel that subliminal content and it will emerge naturally in conversations or questions.' Penguins, a co-production between Cahoots and Birmingham Rep, was made when same-sex parenting was being widely discussed. Photograph: Robert Day He describes The Vanishing Elephant as a synergy of spectacle and storytelling that happened almost by accident. 'When Nivelli's War was playing at the New Victory Theatre I was given a guided tour and told that Houdini had vanished an elephant on that very stage. I knew that wasn't correct. He had done it at the Hippodrome, which actually backed on to the New Victory's stage. 'I was immediately fascinated, not so much with how Houdini had made an elephant disappear but how an elephant from India ended up on a stage in New York. On the flight home I storyboarded that show. I knew that it had to start in India, with a wee boy befriending an elephant, and that it should end with an old man, who was once that wee boy. The story's aesthetic came almost fully formed in my head. I drew it out in one sitting, got home, gave the storyboard to Charlie and asked him to work his magic on it. And, boy, he did.' The Vanishing Elephant: 'Our scale has shifted, and our creative ambition has shifted with it,' says Cahoots artistic director Paul McEneaney These days Cahoots spends a significant amount of time performing in the United States. Clearly there is a financial incentive, but, as McEneaney explains, there are other reasons, too. 'Yes, it's profitable, but it's also a market that allows us to reinvest in our space here. Even more important is that we're using local artists. When we tour here our contracts are short, but we can take artists and technicians to the States and create long, extended tours. 'We've built a strong reputation that has generated funding for projects which will inevitably end up on the stage back home. Private donors and the venues themselves are wanting to invest. So we are no longer over-reliant on public funding. We've identified independence as a goal, and that has involved some serious risk-taking. 'In the current political and financial environment it would be easy to lose sight of our frontline services, but our primary focus will always be on what a child sees on a stage. If we can't deliver a piece of work to our required standard we won't do it. Our scale has shifted, and our creative ambition has shifted with it. I want more young people to see and experience our work. I want to create work that is bold and big and ambitious. I'm not embarrassed to say that.' The Vanishing Elephant, staged by Cahoots , is at Southbank Centre , London, May 29th-June 1st; Buxton Opera House , June 6th-8th; Oxford Playhouse , June 11th-14th; and Belgrade Theatre , Coventry, June 18th-21st
CBC
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
In 1997, Julie Taymor pulled off the 'impossible' with The Lion King musical
Nearly 30 years ago, American theatre director Julie Taymor was approached to adapt The Lion King into a stage musical. At the time, she had never seen the hit Disney movie. "I think they were shocked I hadn't seen it," Taymor tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "I was just busy. I was doing lots of things, but when I did see it — they sent me a video — I loved it." Today, The Lion King musical is the highest-grossing production of all time, in theatre or in film, taking over $10 billion US worldwide. But many thought it couldn't be done due to the massive challenge of adapting an epic animated film for the stage. WATCH | Julie Taymor's full interview with Tom Power: After watching the movie, Taymor says there was one particularly challenging scene that convinced her to take on the project. "It was that stampede that was the turning point for me to go, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got to do this,'" she says. "Because it's so not theatre, because it's impossible." Drawing on her knowledge of puppetry and theatrical traditions from all around the world, Taymor knew she would find a way to pull it off using a combination of different techniques. "You start with a piano roll and all of the wildebeest are painted — teeny-teeny on a back piano roll going down," she explains. "That's the wide long shot. And then in front of that, looking towards the audience, is a big rolling barrel with small, about 12-inch relief sculptures of wildebeest…. In front of that, we had the female dancers each holding two larger masks of the wildebeest heads … and then finally, the closest to the audience, are these eight-foot masks of wildebeest that are used like shields by the male dancers. It looked like hundreds and hundreds of wildebeest. That was fun to figure out." WATCH | Disney's The Lion King: The production features more than 200 puppets, including rod puppets, shadow puppets and full-body puppets. With the more elaborate puppets, the audience can see the performer inside operating them. Taymor calls this approach the "double event." It allows the audience to watch the animal puppet as well as the performer's facial expressions. "What we have is this appreciation of the art of making theatre," Taymore says. "If I'm going to take it from a 2D animated film, we need to do what theatre can do better than film. Better in the sense of being totally enveloping and the idea that you can appreciate the story and the technique simultaneously, that they're both rich experiences." The Lion King musical is playing now at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. It runs until Aug. 30.
BBC News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
War Horse actor's school visit makes 'core memory' for pupils
A former school caretaker brought some of his new stage colleagues - including a large horse puppet - to Derbyshire to meet the children he used to work the Covid-19 pandemic, actor Karl Haynes, from Ilkeston, worked as a classroom assistant, cleaner and handyman at Ladywood Primary in nearby Kirk he is now back on stage and plays the role of Ted Narracott in the touring production of Michael Morpurgo's War Haynes returned to the school on Friday with fellow actors, puppeteers and a foal model, and head teacher Melanie Lawson said the visit "made a core memory" for the children. Miss Lawson said the idea came after the school booked a trip to see the production during its visit to Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall. She said: "It was incredible - we're a small school in Kirk Hallam but we have big hopes and dreams."We were really lucky to have incredible puppeteers, actors and production staff come to the school."Mr Haynes has multiple roles when he joined us in lockdown, so the children who saw the show knew who he was."The kids were able to interact with the baby horse called Joey, it did feel like there was a real baby horse in the hall." The novel was first adapted for the stage in 2007, and has toured the West End, Broadway and around the UK Haynes said the puppets like the one he helped bring to meet the schoolchildren in Kirk Hallam "are immense", and took eight months to build and three people to added: "I've invested a lot of time into this school as a cleaner, caretaker and handyman, so to see the children's reactions was one of the best moments of my acting career."
CTV News
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Clowning around with Mr. Puppet
International puppeteer Bob Abdou and Sleepy the Clown team up with Winnipeg's Bump A Nose Clown Alley for workshops and a whimsical all-ages clown show.
