Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2011 - 46

photo by paul kolnik

Young Joey with Albert, played by Seth Numrich.

The machine gun mechanism inside tank.

The goose is also a rod puppet operated by a single puppeteer using
two hands. The design of the feet device, pictured here, is essentially that of
a measuring wheel with feet. It allows the goose to move at an appropriately
hurried pace around stage while the puppeteer operates it with one hand on
the handle and the other on a rod that controls head and wing movement via
the rod and additional cabling. The goose is an audience favorite, described
in cast member Matt Doyle's official War Horse video blog as the "true star
of the show" and "scene stealer extraordinaire." The goose also has numerous (unofficial) Facebook fan pages.
The largest puppet in the show is the tank. Operating the tank puppet
onstage takes six people; two are inside the front end and four more push
from inside the back end. Between the puppeteers is housed a mechanism
to simulate engine noise and machine gun fire. This works via a mechanism by which a wireless signal from the soundboard activates the release of
propane and oxygen that are ignited by a spark plug at staccato intervals to
simulate machine gun fire. A speaker in the tank provides the engine noise.
The tank appears only once during the show, but the effect, like the
tank itself, is huge. It rolls straight downstage where it unleashes violence the
like of which has, literally, never been seen before by those characters who
encounter it. Then it makes a loop and comes straight back upstage.

ll of the puppets in War Horse are fascinating works
of art, but the horse puppets are the true stars of the
show-both because they portray central characters in the story and because, in doing so, they achieve such a remarkable combination of artistry
and realism.
The main equine character, Joey, is bought at auction as a foal and
lovingly raised into a fine field hunter and working plough horse by
young Albert Narracott before being sold into service in World War I.
Two different puppets are used to represent Joey, who enters as a foal
and matures during the course of the play into an adult horse.
The other major equine character is Topthorn, a fine thoroughbred
horse who serves in the war with Joey. There are four additional equine
characters known as "mustering horses" that supplement the cavalry
forces. Two others, Heine and Coco, pull artillery and ambulances.
In order to understand the success and the technical achievements
of War Horse it is essential to look in detail at these nine horse puppets.

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2011

The horse puppets are built in Cape Town, where, as Adrian Kohler
explains, "The horses are completely handmade. There is very little
twentieth century technology in them. We used a bit of laser cutting on
the plywood and some of the aluminum pieces. But because they have
to be light and flexible, and each one of them is different, they can't be
mass-produced, unfortunately (Jones 2011)."
Puppet engineer Kyle Barrineau spoke with me at length about the
War Horse puppets, which he cares for forty hours a week at the Vivian
Beaumont Theater. He described them, half jokingly, as being made of
"cane, string, glue, and pantyhose." Adrian Kohler, in a 2011 interview
with the New York Times, described the puppets as "plywood and various
forms of foam rubber. The skin of the horse is made out of a thin nylon
stretch material that enables the puppeteer to see." Paul Smithyman commented on the cable and lever system that enables the life-like movements
of the horses by saying, "The amazing thing is, it's just bicycle technology!" But, of course all three men are oversimplifying for the layman.
Some details of the basic construction and manipulation of the horse puppets follow.

Construction of the Horse Puppets
Each horse puppet has an exoskeleton made of cane. The cane comes
uncolored and wound in stiff rings. Later, it will be colored to match each
horse-chestnut for Joey, black for Topthorn, shades of ghostly gray,
brown, black, and tan for the mustering horses, and even paler shades for
Heine and Coco. The puppeteers dress to match. The cane is first soaked
in water to soften it, then shaped by bending it around nails on a specially designed mold or form. After they dry, the formed pieces of cane
are whipped (wrapped) using waxed linen. At points where degrees of

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2011