Tony-winning director Tom Morris brings puppets to Spoleto

War Horse director Tom Morris has brought his Tony-winning talents to Spoleto festival in Charleston, South Carolina, where he will present an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Morris’ latest puppet-based production features live actors that manipulate the puppets on stage. The puppets were made by the same South African Handspring Puppet Company that aided Morris in his production of War Horse . Morris’ version of “Midsummer” will not only feature puppets that resemble human actors, but also birds, masks, and disembodied limbs.

Morris says that he enjoys using puppets and believes they appeal to audience members. “If you put a puppet on the stage and the audience wants to hear the story and follow the story, the audience will imagine the puppet is alive,” Morris said, as reported by The Washington Post .

However, he recognizes the challenge puppets present for the director. “The bigger the scale of the imaginative investment, the more you need to take care of it, in a way,” Morris said. “There is a risk, because there could come a moment when anyone in the audience could say, ‘Hang on. That’s not a boat, it’s just a bundle of wood,’ or ‘That’s not a horse.’”

Morris explained that casting his adaptation presented other challenges, as he needed to find actors who could multitask. 680 News reports Morris’ explanation of the casting processes.

“The actors need to be able to deal with text, they need to be able to deal with music and all of them are puppeteers,” he said. “You are not only casting the role, you are casting the aptitude for learning physical puppetry.”

Late composer Gian Carlo Menotti founded the The Spoleto festival in 1977, and this year’s festival features 160 performances. The festival began on May 24 and finishes June 9.

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