Meet the Puppet Masters Behind War Horse

(dramatic music)

Joey's made out of three main materials.

He's made of a wicker over the frame to give the shape.

Aluminum is the actual frame which gives rigidity

for the actors to strap into or the puppeteers,

and then he's got mesh which makes him look full.

It also allows the actors to be able to see out a little bit

but when it's lit you can't see right through him,

which is a very nice composition of the art of it.

Joey is built over a fairly long course of time

at Handspring Puppet Factory, which is in South Africa,

and so they're all built and shipped over here,

and I believe they start with the aluminum frame

and then they start just wrapping the cane around

and getting the forms that they want.

So every horse is actually different,

they don't build them on a form,

they don't bend each piece specifically.

It's just hand done, hand wrapped,

they wrap little bits of string around

to hold everything in place

and then just glue over the string.

For the most part Joey stays as a whole.

He also travels as a whole, when we move him we,

you know we travel him, we get him all setup

and nice safe and secure and he travels all in one piece,

as one, so we never really take Joey apart.

(gentle music)

Each actor has kind of a physical movement,

a part that they carry, as well as a,

like emotional movement, but that can also be

something that's physical.

So for instance the head actually controls

where the head points, but he also moves the ears.

The heart position has two different movements,

he actually curls the feet as well as actually

pulling the heart but his emotion is to breath

with the horse and the hind moves the rear feet

and flicks the rear tail.

It's a balance that you're having between whether

you're in control of Joey or Joey is controlling all of us.

It's not so much buttons and levers that we're pulling,

but our whole body's breathing together

and integrating to make the horse seem alive.

The puppet is actually quite simple,

from just a basic operational perspective,

but it's the,

it's the life that we have to infuse the puppet with

that sort of makes it look more complicated and fluid.

[Gregory] There is the kind of constant direction

that no matter what's happening on stage

we must always be living breathing horse.

So our choreography will be, get from point A to point B,

but the way we get from Point A to Point B

will change every night,

and more importantly than anything

we need to react to what's happening around us

as a horse would.