The Kick and Push Festival – Space Hippo
Space Hippo, presented by Mochinosha & The Wishes Mystical Puppet Company, is an epic shadow puppet show that transcends borders both on earth and in space.
Artists Daniel Wishes from Canada and Seri Yanai from Japan first met while studying puppetry in London. In a shadow puppet class, the two were tasked with creating solo shows—although they were each working on their own project, audiences couldn’t help but notice how well their performances worked with each other. From there, they founded the Mochinosha & The Wishes Mystical Puppet Company, and have since found great success performing their puppet shows in both Canada and Japan—next, they have their sights set on the rest of the globe, with upcoming shows in Indonesia and Armenia.
Space Hippo tells the story of, well, a hippo in space. The hippo is sent to space by a familiar orange-faced politician, who hopes to use her (the hippo) to convince the public that climate change is being taken care of. From there, we are introduced to a host of larger-than-life characters. Wishes says this is one of the reasons he is drawn to puppets: “An actor sort of represents a character in a way that you’re still aware that it’s an actor playing a character, and once the show’s over they go back to being themselves. But a puppet is always that character.”
One of the reasons that Space Hippo is so successful in both Canada and Japan is its ability to communicate without the use of language. Wishes and Yanai speak in English, Japanese, and different “alien” languages throughout—in the Kingston production, only the hippo herself (voiced by Wishes) speaks English. Interestingly, when Space Hippo is performed in Japan, Wishes and Yanai switch roles so that the hippo (now voiced by Yanai) is speaking Japanese.
The thing that struck me most about Space Hippo was the sheer effort and care that went into every single step of the process. The story itself isn’t all that new—it references and parodies other space operas throughout, for example, the character Lizard Man seems reminiscent of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, and a palace scene uses Star Wars cantina-style music. Wishes and Yanai chose perhaps the world’s most labour-intensive form to show audiences a familiar story from a new angle. Space Hippo features over 200 hand-cut shadow puppets (Yanai says it took her three months of intense work to create them all), and with only two puppeteers, Wishes and Yanai are constantly scrambling to portray and voice all of the characters and landscapes. However, their performance comes across as completely effortless to the audience. In two years of rehearsing and performing Space Hippo, Wishes and Yanai have become masters of this story.
Space Hippo plays at The Grand Theatre until Saturday, August 4th. It is written by Daniel Wishes, directed by Seri Yanai, with original music by Elliott Loran. Find more information about Mochinosha & The Mystical Wishes Company here.