Theatre Studies

Liveness and Technology: How much is to much technology

within a live piece of theatre?

When people think of the theatre they think about heartbreak and romance, emotional ballads,
dazzling dance numbers. They get inspired when they see someone bare there heart up there on the
stage. However as times are moving forward to a more technologically advanced age are we still
getting the same feeling from the theatre or is it being lost within the spectacle of technologies. We
are currently seeing a lot more shows taking advantage of projection and puppetry but how much can
be used before we lose that feeling we get from the life aspect all together.

King Kong is a prime example of a musical that places it’s focus on the spectacle of
technologies over the liveness of actors. It was put together by Australian production company Global
Creatures the company behind the spectacle show ‘Walking with dinosaurs’ and they first started
working on the show in 2010. The creative team includes director Daniel Kramer and Tony-winning
book writer-playwright Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, The Light in the Piazza). The score is original
material by music producer-composer Marius de Vries plus original music by other artists. The
backdrop to show consists of elaborate lighting patters but the real technological feat is King Kong. A
massive silverback gorilla and is shown onstage through the use of a “animatronic-marionette puppet
hybrid that is controlled by hydraulics, automation, and manual manipulation from a team of
puppeteer/aerialists.” (Hetrick, 2013, para. 8) It’s controlled by a group of 35 on-stage and off-stage
puppeteers who work to manoeuvre the large-scale puppet. Several puppeteers are positioned on
swinging trapezes and others launch themselves as counterweights off the puppet's shoulders to raise
Kong's massive arms as he runs and swipes. The show has a crew of 76; and arguably the most
technologically advanced puppet in the world – a one-tonne, six-metre giant silverback gorilla.
Carmen Palovic, chief executive of Global Creatures, said in a statement “We want to immerse the
audience in the emotional journey of the book and music as much as the spectacle of our pioneering
animatronics and puppetry,”.(Gans, 2010, para. 4) After the world-premiere opening night on June
15, 2013 it was clear this vision was not yet met. The show rightfully earned praise for its impressive
technical achievements. Critics and audiences were astounded by the size of the colossal animatronic
gorilla; however, most reviews reported a lack of dramatic cohesion between the show’s book and
score. Throughout its time on stage in Australia king kong continued to get similar reviews The
Herald Sun gave the show 4 out of 5 stars, reporting, “The six-metre Kong is the runaway star of this
new musical and the most fully developed character on stage ... However, songs must advance story
and illuminate characters and, although Marius De Vries’ compositions are rousing and diverse, and
individual songs by contemporary artists have a distinctive flavour, the repertoire lacks a consistent
voice and unified vision.” (Herbert, 2013, para 11) Obviously King Kong is a huge dramatic feat but
bringing that much technology into the world of live theatre but it can be dangerous as it risks losing
the correct balance of liveness and technology needed for a stage show. Now in Philip Auslander’s
article Liveness, Mediatization and Inter-medial Performance (pg. 1, para. 3) he references Herbert
Blau (an american director and theoretician of performance) when he says

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 “Blau’s claim that a performance combining live bodies and filmed images can produce a
“confusion of realms” presupposes that live and recorded images are perceived as belonging to
different realms”.
This meaning that when you put live theatre and on screen technology together an audience can
become confused as they are not used to the two being together. However an audience are not
completely stupid to the point where they can’t handle the two together but it does create a disconnect
from the live aspect if you have to watch a screen for half of the story. King Kong obviously isn’t a
screen as he is a Ginormous puppet but the same concept does apply. The audience is trying to have a
genuine connection with the leading lady who is singing a beautiful emotion ballad but is then
suddenly interrupted by a huge ape who is clearly being controlled by men in black morph suits
jumping around, the two just have a certain disconnect you don’t get when it’s a completely live
performance.

War Horse is a play based on the book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo adapted to stage
by Nick Stafford in 2007. The play uses life sized puppetry created by The Handspring Puppet
Company to portray the horses within the story. The puppets are made out of a cane frame and
stretched fabric and they weigh 66lbs each. The puppets are controlled by three people two inside
controlling the legs and allowing the knees to bend and the third is leading the horse controlling it’s
with a rod and using a lever to to operate the ears. All three of the actors mark their own horse noises
as well as producing the horse movement. The actors have studied for weeks listening to and
watching horses in order to make these puppets as real as possible. A very subtle yet important detail
within these puppets is mechanisms which give the puppets the ability to breathe or at least look like
they’re breathing. In a TED talk about the puppets of War Horse by Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler
the creators of Handspring Puppet Company Jones discusses how important the idea of breathing is to
them and their puppets. They mentioned how difficult it was to make the horses breath naturally as
that would require making the horses chest expand sideways. Doing it that way would not only be
harder for the puppeteers but also would be almost invisible to the audience anyway. To combat that
challenge that made a channel in the front of the horse so the chest can move up and down to breathe.
“So it’s anti-naturalistic really, the up and down movement but it feels like breath.” (March 2011)
Movement director and mime artist Toby Sedgwick also said “the three puppeteers were needed to
convey the emotions of the horses . The ears were a particular challenge. When a horse is relaxed, its
ears point straight up, w hen it's upset and angry, the ears go back, and when it's listening for a
command, it has one ear twisted forward and one back. But that's just the start of it. If you're going to
convey emotion, you can't just convey it through the ears”. (Jamieson, 2009, para. 9)
The huge winning point for this production was their need to create puppets that we as life like
as possible. It was the fact that technology and live actors came together to create a whole new entity,
an animal in a some what in-between state, obviously not real but definitely real enough for the
audience to embrace as just another life on the stage. This was seen through the numerous reviews
praising the show. Michael Billington from the guardian said “The real genius of this stage show lies
in the work of the Handspring Puppet Company's Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler. They have created,
out of skeletal bamboo frames and internal hinges, the most plausible and expressive quadrupeds ever
to have graced the London stage.” Entertainment weekly wrote a review gushing about the show by
saying “The life-size creatures seem to breathe, snort, feed, walk, gallop, and rear up just as naturally
as the genuine articles. In no time at all, they become characters as rounded and complex as of the
humans on stage.” And Charles Spencer from the Telegraph stated that “Puppets are often an
embarrassment, involving a lot of effort and fuss for negligible returns.” But then went on to praise

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the show by saying “This is much more than a puppet show, it brilliantly captures not only the
mysterious and intense relationship that can exist between humans and animals, but also the dreadful
waste and terror of the Great War.” The word relationship in that review sums it all up. When it
comes to liveness and technology IT IS a relationship. Both partners have to work with each other in
order to get the best out of the relationship. You can’t have one aspect stronger than the other, the
actors have to acknowledge the technology and embrace it, work with it and in the case of War Horse
it’s the actors becoming the technology, being the puppets and bringing them to life not relying on the
technology to bring the show itself to life. But on the other side it’s also the creation of the puppets
that have to allow the actors to have that freedom and ability to become one with the technology so
that the show a can flourish.

When it comes to Blau’s statement about the “confusion of the realms” that is very well a true
statement. The realms of liveness and technology can become blurred but when it’s done really well
and the balance is correct between the two it can create something beautiful. King Kong is an example
of the realms becoming muddled therefore a good story and great talent is overlooked because and
audience is trying to focus on far to much at once. Whereas War Horse is a prime example of the line
between the realms being blurred and the two states, liveness and technology, working side by side to
create a beautiful living breathing piece of theatre.

Reference List
Adam Herrick - Playbill. (June 26th 2013). King Kong Musical May Conquer Broadway Next. Retrieved
Friday 17th November. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/179533-King-Kong-Musical-May-Conquer-
Broadway-Next

Andrew Gans - Playbill. (September 6th 2010). King Kong Musical Aiming for Broadway in 2013;
Creative Team Announced. Retrieved Friday 17th November. http://www.playbill.com/article/king-kong-
musical-aiming-for-broadway-in-2013-creative-team-announced-com-171812

Kate Herbert - The Herald Sun. (June 15th 2013). Musical review: King Kong, world premiere at the
Regent Theatre, Melbourne. Retrieve Friday 17th November.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/audiences-awed-by-king-kong-spectacle/news-
story/3537e9f38b778d62b830720699a99cda

Auslander, P. (2000). Liveness, Mediatization, and Intermedial Performance.

Kohler, A. Jones, B. (Speakers). (2011, March). The Genius Puppetry Behind War Horse. [Video Clip].
Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/handpring_puppet_co_the_genius_puppetry_behind_war_horse

Alastair Jamieson - The Telegraph. (April 11th 2009). War Horse: How the puppets work. Retrieved
Saturday 18th November. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5140364/War-Horse-How-the-
puppets-work.html

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