Zebras crossing: Why are life-sized animal puppets ‘stampeding’ around the world?
As they bring city centres to a halt, their message is simple: If we can do this for cardboard cutouts, think what we could do, together, for the climate.
Giraffes tower over office-goers in London. Wildebeest trot beside monkeys in Denmark. Wolves and zebra parade through Venice.
Herds of life-sized animal puppets have been charging through city streets, as part of a public-art project that seeks to underline the urgency of the climate crisis.
The Herds and its 70 recycled-wood-and-cardboard puppets will keep going, over the coming months, in what they call their “stampede around the world”.
Created by the UK-based not-for-profit public-art company The Walk Productions, they have visited 25 cities in 11 countries across Africa and Europe so far (Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Norway).
In each city, they transform spaces such as public squares, beaches, marketplaces and lake shores into platforms for messages about the loss of biodiversity and the need for collective action.
In some cases, this involves precise appearances and filmed moments such as the animals roaming wild through Venice’s Piazza San Marco at sunrise. In other cases, as in London’s Soho, a “stampede” was organised through the busy streets, led by the puppets and made up of hundreds of local residents.
“It was during our tour with Little Amal that the idea for The Herds came about,” says Sarah Loader, executive producer with The Walk.
Little Amal was a 12-ft puppet of a Syrian child refugee that “walked” 8,000 km between 2021 and 2023, to highlight injustices around displacement using theatre and storytelling.
“As refugees in Europe shared their stories, after our events, it underlined for us that it was not just war they fled. Many had fled climate-induced hardships such as crop failures, floods and droughts,” Loader says.
So the plan for the march of The Herds took shape. Artistic director Amir Nizar Zuabi decided to involve local citizens as participants in each city, through local producers identified in each region.
The idea was to mirror the mass collaboration and ambition it will take to address our shared crisis. “The goal was to prove that what seems impossible, like shutting down Tower Bridge in London or the heart of Madrid for a creative message, can happen with collective will,” Loader says.
BEAST BEHAVIOUR
The journey of The Herds began along the Congo River in Kinshasa in April.
Not far away lies the Congo Basin rainforest, the world’s second-largest. “Beginning there allowed us to draw attention to this critically important part of the world, which is so vital to the health of the planet but so hugely under-reported,” Loader says.
At different stops along the journey, more puppets were added, representing species that were already suffering directly as a result of the rising temperatures. Red deer were introduced in the UK; moose in Denmark.
The puppets were designed and maintained, along the journey, by Cape Town-based puppeteer Siphokazi Mpofu. She travelled with the core group of 42 (dancers, performers, puppetry teachers, event managers and technicians from 19 countries), repairing hooves and reinforcing frayed exteriors.
Eventually, she says, smiling, the demands of the journey proved too much for some of her creations. “Many of the ‘animals’ did die from ‘exhaustion’ and damage, thinning the herd as it pressed on.”
Losing them felt evocative, she adds, because she and the travelling team had been moved by the reality of how life can survive in such a range of ways, and yet at the same time remain so fragile.
Weather or not
An Indian artist was part of the travelling team as well. Deepali Tiwari, 28, a puppeteer pursuing a PhD in English literature at Allahabad University, found that her training aligned perfectly with the needs of the project. When the call went out for registrations, she applied and was accepted.
Tiwari has trained in Bunraku, the Japanese style of puppetry that demands synergy among at least three operators. This helped the team choreograph movement for the larger animals.
“Puppets and people migrated together,” she says. “We flung ourselves into uncertainties together. People and pets embraced us without judgment. Sometimes, dogs barked and children hugged us.”
In Europe, they faced the crisis itself. Temperatures stayed largely above 40 degrees Celsius. “It was as if the heat waves were chasing us,” Tiwari says.
In mid-monsoon Kinshasa, meanwhile, locals made it through floodwaters in the wake of a storm, to participate. “We thought we would have to cancel, but people turned up, soaking wet. Their determination inspired us,” Loader says.
It all seemed to culminate at the fast-melting Jostedal Glacier in Norway.
A strenuous hike, with the puppets carried on stretchers, ended abruptly amid sudden rains that forced the group back down the mountain. The team returned the following day for a triumphant, emotional performance.
It was the last walk of this leg of the tour. As the animals made their way through the snow and onto the ice, they had, for the moment, nowhere else to go.
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