Meet: Joe Darke – TORUK Puppeteer

Direhorse

The first thing the cast members of the Cirque du Soleil production “Toruk: The First Flight” were given were tails. “When we started, the first that happened was someone coming up to you and saying, ‘Here’s your tail,’” said Joe Darke. “We were told, ‘Wear it and get used to wearing it because it’s going to be with you for a long time.’”

“Toruk: The First Flight” is based on the James Cameron film “Avatar,” set on a distant planet called Pandora whose inhabitants, called the Na’vi, are blue-skinned humanoids with prehensile tails. Darke, however, is one of six members of the cast who don’t have to wear blue. Darke and his colleagues are the production’s puppeteers, in charge of bringing to life a menagerie of alien creatures. “We’re dressed completely in black when we’re on stage, but we still had to have the tails,” Darke said. “It’s to show that, even though we aren’t seen by the other characters, we’re still a part of the Na’vi world.”

The creatures Darke and his fellow puppeteers embody range from a slow-moving tortoise-like fellow called a turtapede to six-legged direhorses and viperwolves. “I made sure I was the front half of the horse,” Darke said, laughing. “I operate the head and mouth, and my legs are the front legs. The bloke in the back is the horse’s back legs, and he also operates the middle two legs. My favorite characters are the viperwolves,” he said. “It’s this six-legged wolf that also has some lizardy qualities to it. They’re surly beasts and fun to play.”

Darke has been acting since the age of 10 and later studied at the East 15 Acting School. He was the musical director and one of the actors in the award-winning play “Bound,” presented by Bear Trap Theatre Company that was a hit of the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and got his start in puppetry in the United Kingdom and South African productions of “War Horse.”

“War Horse” was Darke’s first major puppeteering job, but it didn’t quite prepare him for what the creations for “Toruk: The First Flight” required. “Cirque du Soleil is always trying to do things bigger and better,” he said. “In this show, every puppet is different, and they are trying things that have never been done before.”

The Toruk itself is an example. A dragon-like creature with a 40-foot wingspan that takes six people to control, it is created to be a “reverse marionette” — instead of the operators manipulating the puppet from above, Darke and his colleagues are on the ground. “One guy controls the head, two work the shoulders, two manipulate the wings and I have the tail,” Darke said. The puppeteers were involved in the creative process from the start, Darke said.

“Basically, it was the designer (Patrick Martel) and the six of us in a room saying, ‘Let’s try this’ and ‘Here, do that,’” he said. “We had three months of creation and rehearsal, and they gave us an incredible amount of freedom to help realize these things. For example, the original designer of the viperwolves had this huge harness we were supposed to wear,” Darke said. “We finally realized that it would be more efficient — and more effective — if we just wore the things. It also helps that each puppet was made specifically to your needs. If the least little thing is out of kilter, you know it.”

{ SOURCE: Tulsa World | http://goo.gl/xZ0WvU }