The Puppetry of War

Today after school I went to the play War Horse at Lincoln Center as a chaperone on one of my coworker's field trips. Let me tell you, the puppetry in this play was amazing! I am probably the last person in the world to see this Tony Award winning musical that has been out for quite some time now, but, regardless, I was impressed. The horse, geese, sparrow, and people puppets were so incredibly lifelike that you really felt as though you were watching the horse as he embarked on his near impossible journey to survive and be reunited with his "boy." There was something so very Steinbeck's The Red Pony about this play. Well, except for the Speilberg ending.

Afterwards, the actors came out to answer questions from the students, which was a really cool theatergoing experience.  Apart from the fact that this was a highly entertaining play, it was a production that was solely for students involved in a program that Lincoln Center runs for New York City school students, and this made the audience experience really unique. There is nothing like watching a teenager react with childlike wonder, laughter, and genuine tears as they enter the transportive world of the theater. One student began in a whisper that crescendoed to an emphatic and loud plea of, "No, no, don't die" during a particularly climactic scene. Another student turned to me midway through the performance and said, "Ms., are you crying?" with a look of incredulity, only to then turn back two minutes later, tears streaming down his face, to say, "I guess I can't make fun, huh?" Sharp, loud  intakes of breaths at dramatic moments, screams at gunshots fired on stage, and a litany of hilarious audience comments littered across the play dialogue made for an experience of heightened reactions, furthering your own excitement as you were swept up into the delight of youth. 

I now want to read the book by Michael Morpurgo. While I was impressed and delighted by the puppetry, the special effects in general, and the relationship between the boy and his horse, I am curious to read the novel to see how I feel about its depiction of war. The play, as staged at Lincoln Center, while definitely encountering some of the realities faced by children growing up during war time, was perhaps with its happy (and highly unrealistic) ending a little disturbing within the context of war. I would love to teach a set of books on war and peace and really ask students to critique the dominant narrative of heroes and honor and loyalty in regards to war. There was so much in the play that, left unquestioned, merely inserts itself into a narrative that I would rather disrupt than promulgate. So I guess what I am saying is: Go see this amazing, amazing play, but be sure to have a discussion afterwards that involves more than a dialogue about horse movement and puppetry.