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Flames licked the edges of the National Arts Festival main stage last week as Janni Younge’s “firebird” stretched open its 10m wingspan to breathe fire over the performers dancing at its feet. Only minutes before, the entire 200kg structure – built of aluminium, goatskin, copper, wood and paper – was hidden inside a massive egg suspended from the rafters of the stage for the duration of the hour-long production, doubling as a projector screen for the display of hand-animated visuals.
Younge’s ambitious creation is just one of the handmade mythical creatures that feature in her reinterpretation of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s folkloric tale of inspiration and passion, The Firebird.
Throughout the work, we meet smaller birds and dragons, dancing beings and some rather magical horned buck, but the firebird itself is something extraordinary, and it takes the art of puppetry to a level so far unseen in South Africa and the
rest of the world.
It took her team 40 weeks to create the magnificent puppet that will next week be taken on a four-week tour through the outdoor parks and amphitheatres of the US. The firebird also marks the award-winning puppet creator’s own return to puppetry since stepping down as director of the celebrated Handspring Puppet Company in 2014.
The first puppet she made, she tells me this week in Grahamstown, was also a dragon – the sort you would see in a glove-puppet theatre with a drop-down mouth.
“I really loved that puppet, I took it everywhere with me.”
The firebird is much, much bigger than that one. Was she ready for the challenge?
“Not by a long way. It’s beyond any of our levels of experience. It’s not just the challenge of 14 performers on stage and a giant dragon, it’s the logistics of these venues and the timing, it’s outrageous.”
She laughs. “But we’re just ... what do they say? Rising to the occasion.”
There are no plans for a South African tour, but visit janniyounge.com for updates on this spectacular production
WATCH THE FIREBIRD TRAILER
