The Montreal Gazette is kicking their coverage of TORUK-The First Flight into high gear ahead of the show’s premiere on the 21st.
THREE VIEWS OF LIFE ON PANDORA
BY: BRENDAN KELLY, MONTREAL GAZETTE
“I’m on stage 95 per cent of the time,” says Toruk performer Gabriel Christo, “and that requires a lot of awareness. It also requires a lot of cardio.”
Gabriel Christo, who plays the Na’vi character Ralu: “This has much more of a storyline (compared to other Cirque shows), and being a lead, I’m on stage 95 per cent of the time, and that requires a lot of awareness. It also requires a lot of cardio. It’s also a big amount of responsibility. We’re speaking Na’vi, and the more we learn, the more we’re going to add into the show. We know there are Avatar fans coming to the show that know Na’vi, so we can’t just make up words. We have to really know it. Na’vi is my fourth language. I speak Portuguese, Spanish, English and a little bit of Na’vi. I learned all these languages with Cirque because we travel everywhere.”
One of the challenges for Patrick Martel (left, with Viperwolf and set designer Carl Fillion) is that a Toruk puppet is “not a 3D image. It’s a real object.”
Patrick Martel, puppet designer: “The challenge when you’re creating something that was seen in the film Avatar is that the audience has seen these creatures before and they’ll recognize them, and they have to feel the same pleasure they had when they saw them in the film. The other challenge is it’s not a 3D image. It’s a real object. The challenge for the new creatures who were not in the film is to make sure the puppets fit in the Avatar universe.”
Costume designer Kym Barrett had to keep in mind she was creating for Na’vi characters, “who are much taller and slimmer.”
Kym Barrett, costume designer: “The idea of trying to create those kinds of colours on stage was a challenge, and also to create for Na’vi, who are much taller and slimmer. So that was the technical challenge. We’re not recreating the movie. We’re creating the world of the past, the archeological beginnings of the movie. So that gave us a little more freedom.”
{ SOURCE: The Montreal Gazette | http://goo.gl/GXux0T }
