Reflections on the herds
- Catherine
- Oct 1
- 9 min read
In January of 2025, swiftly coming to the end of my Developing Your Creative Practice grant, my friend Marina prompted me to come along to a 'soup night' at the Curious School of Puppetry.
Curious is one of London's foremost puppetry training institutions, and on winter evenings hosts nights where you can get a bowl of soup and hear a talk or performance from some of the world's best puppeteers. I had attended before, but it was my friend who nudged me to go that evening, saying only that the topic would interest me.
That night, David Lan, former artistic director of the Young Vic theatre, introduced to the audience a wildly ambitious project in development called The Herds. The plan was to take a massive troup of cardboard puppet animals on a 20,000km performance journey from The Congo Basin in Africa, to The Arctic Circle in Norway, dramatising the mass migration of wild animals fleeing climate disaster. To do this, The Walk Productions, was searching for 40 puppeteers between the ages of 21 - 35, with a background in physical theatre, and an interest in climate action.
I began writing my application about fifteen minutes into David's talk.
For me, it was a stunning moment of providence, a project that brought together a need for my specific skills with my niche interest in how theatre can respond to the climate crisis. I was giddy with excitement, and very clear on my feelings, if I didn't get this one - I would be devastated.
Over the next month I went through an audition and interview process, including a slightly intimidating conversation with our wonderful artistic director Amir Nizar Zuabi who quizzed on me what my life's greatest failure was - and if I truly understood just how challenging this journey would be. I was enthusiastic, and perhaps a bit naive - of course I understood!
By the end of Febuary, word came - I was in, and would be leaving for Spain at the close of May, ready to travel through seven countries over the next two and a half months.
The forty three puppeteers who had been recruited from nineteen countries prepared by spending the lead up to the tour in the gym, working to get our fitness up for what we were told would be a grueling performance schedule. But upon making it to Spain - we all soon realised it had most certainly not been enough.
Our first week in San Fernando was spent in intensive puppetry training in a massive basketball stadium, designed to accommodate the life size giraffes, elephants, wilderbeast, zebras, lions and gorillas we would be performing. Temperatures were regularly reaching 35 degrees and we were working 8 - 10 hours a day with the team, operating the heavy plywood and cardboard animals with bodies unused to how to move them successfully.
The team from The Walk, and Ukwanda Puppetry and Design Arts Collective were incredible and kind teachers, but nothing could have prepared us for the aching muscles, bleeding hands and sheer exhaustion we experienced as we worked to bring the animals to life. Simultaneously, we were coming to know each other as a massive family of performers - actors, dancers, puppeteers and theatremakers from everywhere - all figuring each other out and understanding how we fit into a totally new dynamic.
At the end of that week we performed in San Fernando, collaborating with a troupe of vibrant flamenco dancers to stage scenes of the puppets racing into the city streets, encountering the pulsing rythm of the dancer's feet. Under sweltering sun and on baking cobblestones we walked the animals in a circular route around to the central square, now settled into puppetry teams specializing in one animal, in my case - the gorilla. I remember very clearly about twenty minutes in, swear pouring down my face, arms aching as I struggled to keep the gorilla puppet breathing, walking, and responding to the chaotic city environment, thinking - fuck, I don't think I can do this. The same thought was mirrored on the faces of all my fellow performers. But we pulled that first performance off by sheer will, collapsing on the cool marble floors of the government building in San Fernando afterwards. We spent the evening at the beach, ecstatically floating in the salt water of Cadiz as it soothed our exhausted muscles.
It would have seemed absolutely unimaginable that day what we would go on to achieve during our 20,000km journey. How we would learn to use just the right amount of energy and bodily tension to bring the animals to life. How we would learn to hold the puppets and switch positions with one word to minimize the strain on our bodies - and sometimes how to simply say - I cannot do the Elephant ever again.
After San Fernando we began to move, heading north to the hot, crowded streets of Madrid and then into rural France and on to Paris, where we sweltered again in a heatwave. We were soon performing up to three times a day, collaborating with local artists to create unique and complex scenes in city streets, where animals clashed with the urban environment, forced to flee natural disaster. Enormous crowds turned out to see us, a mix of people who had shown up specifically for the animals, and those who had stumbled upon scenes of Elephants and Giraffes in their city by accident.
For me, it soon became clear that The Herds was succeeding on multiple levels. Each individual performance was its own intervention - animals and humans meeting in a visceral and emotional encounter in an age of crisis. There was also the online element - we were travelling with an incredibly skilled videography and photography team who were capturing each performance. Thousands of people were experiencing The Herds as short films online, each one a unique documentation of the animal's journey. And then there was the tour itself - the entire journey was a symbolic performance, a great migration of people and animals representing all the migrations that already are (and will be) undertaken because of climate change.
People connect emotionally with animals. We see the purity of the needs, motivations and complexity of the animal kingdom as something we are designed to appreciate and respect, and recognise that we are harming in our actions. When we are faced with wild animals, distressed and fleeing due to human induced climate change, we cannot help but feel the clarity of their intuition and need for safety. I saw this emotional response in audiences all over the world, many of whom were moved to tears or expressions of awe at the animals. Nizar told us that although humans can never fully understand what it is to be a lion, the beauty of puppetry is that the puppet is half lion, half puppeteer, and in that space, an audience might be able to enter in and understand.
As we traveled overland across Europe we became a committed team, developing a stamina that our old selves in Spain would have envied. Family is a word used a lot in performance circles, but it is the right way to describe the tight nit bond formed between all members of The Herds, performers and production alike.
Two of the most challenging and spectacular days of the journey occurred towards the end of the migration when the odyssey of The Glacier became legend. Arriving in Norway for the final leg, happy but weary from nearly two months on the road, we journeyed to Jostedalsbreen national park on the quest to film the puppet's final walk up the Jostedalsbreen glacier, to be released at the end of the project. To do so would require us to hike for about four hours up the mountain, carrying the puppets on stretchers, before reaching the glacier itself, donning crampons and harnesses, hiking another hour and filming the puppets on the ice for about five hours, before hiking down again with them. The plan was to try and achieve this in one go so as to minimize the enormous effort it would require.
Led by an expert team of local guides we made the long and strenuous hike up the mountain, running into the hurdle of a collapsed snow bridge which required us to cross an ice river slowly barefoot - the sheer pain of which none of us will soon forget. Having arrived at the base of the glacier, I took a 20 minute power nap on the rocks, the tour having made my ability to nap on any surface or in any location an art form. And then it was time to go -harnessed up and with spikes on our feet, we were moments away from stepping onto the ice when enormous dark clouds rolled in over the mountain. The wind picked up and in the space of ten minutes a wild storm descended.
Our puppets are made of cardboard, and don't do well in light drizzle, let alone a Norweigan rainstorm. Blue tarpaulins were frantically tied down over both people and animals. I clambered inside the dismembered body of the elephant, large enough to fit three inside, and we sheltered there, shivering. It soon became clear that we would not be getting onto the glacier that day. When the storm cleared briefly, the decision was made to descend the mountain - leaving the puppets up there tied down under cover. We reached the bottom again about 11pm and returned to our lodge, thoroughly demoralized. A midnight meeting was called and an announcement made - we were going to try again tomorrow, only, because of another oncoming storm, we would have to leave again in six hours. Anyone who felt they could manage it, should get some sleep now.
And so, we did the whole thing again, this time on four hours sleep and an apple and half a sandwich for breakfast. Hiking hours up the mountain, crossing the ice river barefoot again, finding the puppets, assessing their damage, donning our gear and climbing onto the ice.
Once we were on the glacier itself, we had to contend with knee deep snow and thin crevices waiting to catch your legs as we began to walk the animals. Despite these challenges, the feeling of tilting the gorilla's head up to the mountain as my team and I walked him determinedly through the snow was one of the most profound moments of my life. I experienced what all performers chase, a moment of pure flow - where I was both in the experience, and fully aware of how to execute my craft. I felt the emotions of the gorilla - filled with a steely sense of hope that beyond this glacier, a better home, and a better life, awaited him and his kind.
These moments in a performer's life are rare and extremely precious, and the beauty and honesty of the film and photos we captured that day are among my proudest achievements to date. After filming, we hiked down the glacier, removed our gear, put the puppets on stretchers, crossed the ice river barefoot again, and hiked four hours down the mountain, collapsing in a pile of exhausted, proud tears.
It was this spirit of ambition and camaraderie that characterized The Herds - a profound commitment to creating moments of beauty and honesty, and a team willing to give tremendous amounts of themselves to make it happen. The commitment to the free and accessible nature of the project was one of the most striking lessons for me as a theatremaker. The beauty of street theatre and public art is that anyone can enjoy it, perhaps even stumble upon it, making it much more likely for it to succeed as a genuine change making force.
The past year I have been considering deeply what a theatre for an age of climate crisis can be and do. The Herds is one answer, giving audiences a tangible and emotional experience of nature and the effects of climate change in their streets shifts the way people respond to the narrative of eco disaster. Many audience members on the tour came out to meet us with the own small animal puppets they had made, or followed us to the end point of our performances to express their connection to the animals and their solidarity with our message.
I discovered something truly special in the life of an artist. It turns out, that for the right project - one that matters, and where the whole team is giving their best to the achievement of a powerful vision - the energy required becomes self generating. I found that the fulfillment and joy I was receiving from the project and from each performance, was rolling into the energy required for the next day, and the next, each of which was long and physically and emotionally strenuous. That state of flow and joy is one which every artist searches for, and it reminded me again and again that most things worth doing are rarely comfortable or easy.
By the time we reached the top of Norway, exhausted and nursing an injury to my right pectoral muscle, I was in dire need of a pause. But now, two months post tour - I would do it again in a heartbeat. My experience of The Herds has only spurred my interest in creating theatre in unusual,outdoor and public spaces, and in exploring innovative ways to give the public emotional and participatory experiences related to the climate crisis.
Some projects are life changing - and for me, The Herds has been one such project. I can't wait to discover how the skills, ethos and connections nurtured over this past summer of adventure grow and move forward. And perhaps you will catch us out on the road again - breathing life into some spectacular cardboard animals, migrating in search of safety and their own hopeful future.
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