The Wallis Presents LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K From Handspring Puppet Company

Handspring Puppet Company, known for War Horse and stole hearts with Little Amal, joins Cape Town's Baxter Theatre to transform Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee's 1983 Booker Prize-winning novel Life & Times of Michael K into exquisite theatre.  It has five performances at the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis Center for the Performing Arts In Beverly Hills November 21 to 24.

This hauntingly beautiful story follows Michael K, a humble man who finds solace in nature on an epic journey through a mythical, war-torn landscape.  He embarks on his trek through South Africa, ravaged by civil war, to return his mother to die on the farm where she was born.

Robert van Leer, Wallis Executive Director and CEO said, “He finds strength in his own humanity, his profound connection to the earth and his unique path, which, as it unfolds, reveals to him his reason for living.  For the audience, Michael K is a multilayered production, using dance, film, evocative music and exquisite puppetry, in a sweeping stage adaptation of JM Coetzee's novel.”

van Leer continued, “Michael K is not just welcoming for middle and high school students, it embodies a sense of compassion telling the story with adventure and humor.  And all will delight in the puppetry which will have audiences understand why it has been a part of theatrical language for centuries and remember just how engrossing Handspring's War Horse was a decade ago and Little Amal a year ago.”

Life & Times of Michael K is the culmination of more than two years of planning.  It marks the first time that director-writer Lara Foot worked with the Tony award-winning Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler from Handspring Puppet Company. 

The production was invited to debut at the Theater der Welt festival at the Düsseldorf Theatre, Germany, in June 2019, however, the festival was postponed to June 2021 because of the pandemic and travel restrictions. The world premiere was livestreamed from The Baxter to Düsseldorf and then later in November 2021, the company travelled to Germany to perform live for the first time, to great acclaim. 

The creative team is made up of Lara Foot (adaptor, writer, director), Handspring Puppet Company (adaptors, puppet directors, design and makers), Patrick Curtis (set design) Kyle Shepherd (original music composition), Joshua Cutts (lighting), Fiona McPherson and Barrett de Kock (directors of photography and film), Yoav Dagan (videography and editing), Kirsti Cumming (projection design), Phyllis Midlane (costumes) and Simon Kohler (sound design).

The impressive South African cast includes theatre legends Susan Danford,  Andrew Buckland, Faniswa Yisa, Roshina Ratnam, Carlo Daniels, Markus Schabbing, Billy Langa, Marty Kintu and Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and puppet master Craig Leo.

Director Lara Foot said, “Indeed, the single purpose of Michael K - to deliver his mother to the earth and to become a gardener - has resonated in this company's need to deliver his story.  Coetzee has chosen an inimitable every-man as his protagonist, an outsider, ostracized not for his social or political circumstances, but because of his disfigurement. However, Michael K has the unique ability to find his own version of complete freedom; he will not prescribe to servitude, nor politics, and chooses to stay out of any camps.”

Co-puppetry Director Basil Jones said, “John Coetzee is a writer whose greatness lies at least partially, in his ability to powerfully and poetically express the essence of what it is and what it means to be an independent being in the world or a being independent of the world.  Michael K is someone who experiences his person as being radically separated from and independent of people and events.  He is a free soul – but finds himself being serially imprisoned. So how appropriate, then, that he should be represented by a puppet.”

Jones continued, “Creating Michael K and presenting his life has led us into the very heart of what puppets are. We have taken risks and challenged some of the ‘principles of puppetry' that we've developed over the course of our careers. What is the relationship between the self and its prosthesis? To what extent does the puppet's life reside in its manipulators? Can the manipulator speak for the puppet but not be physically connected to it? How can a puppet – an object so obviously controlled by others – become a symbol of independence? All questions that are exciting to be entertaining as we celebrate our 40th anniversary.”

Laura Collins-Hughes in The New York Times wrote, “A puppet named Michael K had just grabbed a mug … still clasping the mug in his right hand, he gazed at her with black, glass-bead eyes like someone who had been taken by surprise. Even frozen mid-gesture, he was subtle, human, uncanny — a striking alchemy of art and imagination … this puppet is the sinewy, carved-wood star, designed and created by Adrian Kohler of Handspring Puppet Company.”  

At two-thirds the size of an average adult human, Michael is operated bunraku-style by a team of three puppeteers. Craig Leo, the show's puppet master, said, “There's something strange that happens. You have these moments — where he just comes alive. It's when the synchronicity really clicks in between the three puppeteers, and then all of a sudden you're holding him and he becomes incredibly light. And he's suddenly almost moving on his own.”

Leo continued, “He has kind of a tortured look on the one side; I don't know how else to describe it. From the other side, he's actually very beautiful. He's a really handsome man … in the light, his expression changes all the time. It catches all those carved lines in the wood.”  To him, Michael is also a magnet for empathy, as puppets are generally — and a portal into the story in a way that no human actor would be.”

Helen Shaw in The New Yorker said, “The puppeteers' extraordinary tenderness with Michael—the way they seem to be helping him rather than manipulating his light limbs—takes on particular meaning the more he suffers. The puppeteers are always in Michael's service. Even when he finds himself in the high wilderness, wasting away from thirst, six gentle hands lift him up.”

Helen Meany in the Guardian said, “Mother and son are puppets, with their puppeteers visible on stage.  At other times, Michael's face is presented in closeup on film, walking through a majestic mountain landscape, in images strikingly juxtaposed with the live action scenes. Around the puppets, the ensemble cast of nine take turns to narrate the story of a man who initially seems defined by what he is not: not a hero, not powerful, someone who simply wants to be left alone, but is hounded by both sides in this unspecified, brutal war. He was becoming ‘a different kind of man;' one who will be hard to forget.  The cumulative impact of all the artistry on stage is immense.”

Mary Pollard in Everything Theatre said, “***** Michael's disfigurement, difficult to portray with make-up on an actor, is ever-present, and a constant reminder that he is unlike most people. He may be considered ugly as a human, but this puppet's eyes sparkle with pure light and life in a way the human characters don't share … this is also a very funny play, with frequent, humorous acknowledgments that human manipulators are present behind the puppets' performances, adding an extra dimension to the narratives of control and collaboration. The objects' animation creates a space of possibility, generating soul, humor and anguish.”

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. To purchase single tickets, subscriptions and for more information, please call 310-746-4000 (Monday – Friday, 10 am to 6 pm) or visit TheWallis.org.

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