Adrian Kohler – Handspring’s master puppet designer, maker and performer – developed a keen interest in puppetry from an early age, his mother being a puppeteer. As a young boy, he was already putting this passion into practice, entertaining friends with figures he had created. ‘Making figures and performing for friends in the neighbourhood gave me an early sense of the power of the animated figure,’ he says.

In Cape Town in 1981, Kohler joined forces with Basil Jones, Jill Joubert, and Jon Weinberg, all former fine art students, to establish Handspring. The company had two main aims: ‘to produce new children’s theatre with puppets that reflected life on the continent on which we lived; and to stake a claim for puppet theatre as a legitimate part of our local theatre vocabulary.’

Almost 30 years later, the company has not only fulfilled these two aims but has surpassed them. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in their most recent project: creating horses for the theatre piece War Horse. The enormous success of this production, commissioned by the National Theatre, London, gained them a Laurence Olivier Award in 2008 for Set Design.

Today the production continues to play to packed audiences at the New London Theatre. Kohler was extremely excited when he was approached by Tom Morris, associate director at London’s National Theatre, about the possibility of Handspring’s involvement in the production of War Horse. Morris outlined the story, written by

Michael Morpurgo. A farm boy named Albert rears a foal that his drunken father mistakenly buys at an auction. Then World War I breaks out and the father sells Joey, the now fully-grown, strong and wilful horse to the army. After surviving a cavalry charge that sees an English officer shot off his back, Joey is put into the service of the German war effort. The horrors of war are seen through the eyes of the horse. Joey does not take sides and responds to food and kindness wherever he finds them. Albert, in a desperate bid to find his horse, signs up for the army even though he is underage and searches for Joey throughout the war. Miraculously, at the armistice, the boy and his horse, both battered and traumatised, find each other at last.

Kohler was instantly inspired by the story. ‘My immediate response was positive: here was an epic war and love story in which one of the leading characters is a puppet horse. It even had a happy ending.’ This was the beginning of a collaboration between

Handspring, the National Theatre Studio and numerous others, which would last four years and eventually lead to the aweinspiring and moving production War Horse. There were frequent phone calls between Kalk Bay (where Handspring is based) and London, and many trips back and forth work-shopping the production. Kohler and Jones even went to visit Morpurgo at his Devon farm.

Read more in the March 2010 issue of CLASSICFEEL magazine