Little Amal’s New York Journey: The Big Puppet in the Big Apple

Throughout the summer of 2021, I bemoaned the Covid pandemic concerns and other practical and financial issues that kept me from the alluring dream of joining Little Amal on her international trek. Little Amal, an eleven-foot-tall puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl, designed and crafted by South Africa’s brilliant Handspring Puppet Company—also famous for their creation of the horse puppets in the UK National Theatre’s production of War Horse—journeyed from Turkey through Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France, and the UK, from late June to mid-November when she arrived at her final destination in the Hague.1 The narrative conceit behind The Walk—one that echoes the situations of too many real individuals—is that Amal, whose name means hope in Arabic, was an unaccompanied minor fleeing unrest in her homeland and making the arduous journey to meet up with her mother. This enormous performative undertaking, created by Good Chance, a socially committed arts organization that produces international, collaborative, and community-building performance projects, set out not only to bring attention to the plight of refugees as their ranks continue to grow through political unrest and environmental crises around the globe, but also to shift the often hostile regard and reception of refugee populations in the countries where they arrive.2 Responding to Good Chance’s invitation to devise creative ways to welcome Amal, community and arts groups across Europe organized events to greet, entertain, celebrate, and interact with their large-scale visitor. This expansive artistic enterprise, with an impressive puppet at its center gathering throngs of participants in outdoor venues, felt particularly enticing and inspiring after two years of Covid pandemic isolations, travel restrictions, and theatre closures. Given the continued importance of her message, Amal has embarked on several subsequent journeys, including one to Ukraine and Poland in the wake of the Russian invasion.Along with thousands of other New Yorkers, I finally got the opportunity to meet Little Amal—who is now said to be ten years old since an event in London celebrated her birthday—during her trip to New York City from September 14 to October 2, 2022. Beginning with an arrival experience at JFK airport, Amal spent two-and-a-half weeks walking to and through venues across the five boroughs, met by performances and crowds that reflected the city’s ethnic and cultural diversity as well as its varied arts and socially engaged communities.Although, on this excursion, Amal visited only one city, instead of crossing multiple national borders, the idea of travelling and displacement, the refugee’s essential condition, is crafted within her. Amal is ingeniously designed to be a large figure that, unlike most processional puppets generally carried aloft on poles, walks with her feet directly on the ground. And in contrast to Royal de Luxe’s enormous characters that have taken over cities like Montreal, Perth, and Antwerp, attached to cranes and operated by ropes and cables from outside, Amal seems to stride of her own accord. Inside the figure stands a puppeteer on the stilts encapsulated within her legs, who does the walking and even dancing, while operating her eyes and mouth with their hands by means of levers. Her eyes can open and close, assisted by a small computer chip, and her mouth can go slightly agape. Two other puppeteers each perform one of her arms, controlled by the long poles they carry as they travel alongside her. On particularly difficult terrain, a fourth puppeteer helps out with a pole placed at her back. The team members must work in concert, sensing and reacting instantly to each other’s moves—coordinating with what Handspring co-founder and executive producer Basil Jones calls “group mind”—in order for Amal to manifest as a visibly living, fully integrated character.3The Walk preserves the magical effect of Amal’s living presence by having her and her unobtrusive entourage (which includes Artistic Director Amir Nizar Zuabi and Puppetry Director Enrico Dau Yang Wey, guiding her in real time) wave friendly goodbyes to spectators at the end of her events, encouraging them not to continue following or taking further photos as she rushes off behind a simple wooden screen to dismantle.Yet the process that goes into creating Amal’s illusion of life is apparent at every moment in performance. Her torso is an open lattice of shaped cane, a design that makes her light to carry and allows wind to blow through so she remains stable. Her central puppeteer is always visible inside this frame, as are the other puppeteers working her arms. The prominence of these operations contributes to her captivating appeal; spectators enjoy both the presence of the enormous, unusual character in their midst and the artistry and virtuosity at work in her construction and in bringing her to life. The project uses three alternating crews of talented and no-doubt resilient performers (puppeteers Sebastian Charles, Craig Leo, Barges Mohammed Smahneh, Mouaiad Roumieh, Ben Thompson, Fidaa Zidan, with locally hired puppeteers Nicole Baker, Yukari Osaka, and Ashley Winkfield). While some people I met at her events remarked that Amal’s face was not particularly attractive, and others said she looked like someone who had already had a hard life, a puppeteer friend posted for me a photo of a group of spunky and adorable young Syrian girls he had met at Za’atari Refugee camp in Jordan, and there was a definite resemblance between them that complimented both. Perhaps the honest details of a young girl’s face, blown up to scale and translated into puppetry, might not echo the more carefully designed “cute” versions we are used to seeing in crafted and animated commercial figures. But like her self-locomoting structure, her face—alert, innocent, and somewhat care-worn—reflects the greater meaning of her performed travels. Not conforming to expectations of a charming doll-like figure signals that she is not here solely to be admired; she makes us think twice about her presence and what it signifies.My first sighting of Amal took place in Times Square. I had originally hoped to catch up with her for a scheduled appearance at the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street, but I arrived ten minutes after her appointed time, and she, having come early, had already taken part in activities, interacted with the crowd, and left. As I heard several astonished people remark, with her long legs, she moves surprisingly swiftly. So I showed up extra early at Times Square. This allowed me to witness a rehearsal of the activities meant to take place once she appeared. A Broadway stage manager ran a small group of professional performers and a larger ensemble of New York High School students through the songs they would sing and sketched out other moments that would happen. Three students had been selected to take turns dancing with Amal, and others were told to create a parting corridor for her at the spot from where she would depart. Somewhat dismayed, I anticipated a very unspontaneous, choreographed performance.However, as Amal arrived, walking north on Seventh Avenue, the encounter took on a life of its own. Crowds of onlookers, including unsuspecting tourists, followed her on all sides and soon poured into the central space that had previously been cleared for the performance and around which the students originally stood. Amal herself, apparently overwhelmed by the throngs and flashing billboards, momentarily sought refuge from it all outside the demarcated circle, leaning up against a storefront. The crowds flowed with her, reshaping themselves as she moved back and forth through them, admiring her, taking photos, and talking. While everyone wanted to get close to her, there were no bad seats in this house; her constant motion through the gathering gave all who wanted an exclusive moment. She eventually seemed to warm up to the venue and its energy, and, slowly opening and closing her eyes, danced to the beats of the drummer that traveled with her. All the events that had been rehearsed indeed took place, but in ways that were unexpected, alive, and mixed in with the spontaneous actions of the unrehearsed crowd. Amal also danced and interacted directly with people who were not preselected, but simply present and engaged with the event in the moment.4 Her actual performance (by her amazing puppeteers of course) as a child responding to the world around her, seeing, not just being seen, occasionally regarding and softly embracing an individual in her path, and sometimes showing herself afraid or overwhelmed by the very activities shaped around her presence and designed to welcome her, helped to lift the event out of the realm of mere spectacle or processional parade exhibit to define a much more human, even humane encounter.Amal’s close intermingling with the people and the performance of the crowd itself, supported by the masterful ability of the puppeteers and her nearly invisible accompanying directors and crew to manage the throngs—all while allowing her to pass continually among them—is what struck me most in all her events. The experience unexpectedly recalled how, when my son was little, we easily walked right up to the corner of Central Park West and Eighty-First Street to join spectators watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade already in progress. Oddly, I didn’t call to mind this moment because of the parade’s famous flying character balloons (initiated by puppeteer Tony Sarg in 1927), whose media and commercially driven nature today stand in stark contrast with the puppet, goals, and motivations behind The Walk. Rather the memory was aroused by the fact that in the following years, after the September 11 attacks, the same scene had transformed into an inscrutable maze of barricades and impenetrable security. Such constraints are now a ubiquitous and expected part of daily life. The pandemic has added further barriers and scrutinizing of credentials to ordinary endeavors, as the refugees that Amal represents know only too well.Given the constant policing of public space, experiencing a major outdoor performance asserting free, unobstructed intermingling with masses of ordinary individuals felt refreshingly liberating. Little Amal’s message, which is at its heart about the necessity of unobstructed border crossings, was echoed in the absence of hindering boundaries around her own presence. The experience also stood in strong contrast to the security measures active for President Biden’s visit to the United Nations, which took place in New York while Amal was in town. These required major thoroughfares on either side of Central Park to be cleared of traffic and flanked with blockades, forcing both cars and pedestrians to make extensive detours. Amal, on the other hand, spent two-and-a-half weeks walking in all parts of New York, its most popular tourist centers and outlier neighborhoods, surrounded at close range by huge crowds, and, to my knowledge, nothing bad happened. This is itself a kind of miracle in our volatile times. At a chance meet-up with Handspring’s Basil Jones and Adrian Koehler, they told me the initial response to requested venues for Amal’s appearances have almost always been a resounding “no.” The project’s ability to turn those noes into yesses in spite of these initial responses is surely a feat of diplomacy comparable to anything Biden was up to at the UN.On September 24, I had the opportunity to get further into the heart of the project by volunteering to participate in events planned for another Amal gathering called “When the pigeons flock.” Each day of her appearances in New York had its own defining phrase or title. That day included a performance in front of St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn followed by Amal walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan. Puppeteer Robin Frohardt, Fogo Azul—“the New York City-based all-women Brazilian Samba Reggae drum line”—and Students Rebuild, an organization that engages children in grades K–12 in international art and philanthropic actions, sponsored by the Bezos Family Foundation, planned the events. Arriving at St. Ann’s Warehouse at 8:45 a.m. to rehearse for the 1 p.m. show, I was excited to find some former students I had introduced to puppetry as well as many local puppeteers, most of whom I hadn’t seen in person since before the pandemic. In fact, connected to New York’s puppetry network, I received calls to participate in several Amal events. This relatively small but strong and mutually supportive community of artists turned out in force for Amal as organizers, performers, and admirers. Frohardt and her troupe built countless cardboard pigeon puppets on poles for the volunteers to carry along with more sophisticated foam pigeons, sporting string mechanisms to flap their wings. Her own collaborators used these birds as they led the rest of us in our puppet flights. At St. Ann’s, we were introduced to all the personnel involved in the project, told how the day would go, and, with some minimal instruction, put through our paces, flying around Amal in our designated flocks.The first part of the event was a more and took place on a by the the of the Brooklyn A large of and children had already before we took our had in the pigeon and their own birds their The performance of puppet production The Amal’s with her and opening an enormous built to her and from it an large of New As she to take a puppet pigeons in for their own Amal also to from a large sporting the New York only to be by puppet The birds continue to and her, eventually flying off with her so Amal moves The in that had the scene the of the which included all the pigeon as we our through the on either the of Dumbo, to the small for the As we the crowds flanked us to take photos and and eventually the joining us in the Amal of us on of the with and as we our following our puppet everyone to the A small group of designated individuals occasionally hands to back the making Amal didn’t get But these are light measures as she was surrounded on all sides by the the and the flying puppet the she occasionally looked over the side of the to the or the real pigeons through the At other she turned back to take in the crowd behind her or to her to or a spectators as active was an we were all in and creating is it that walking across a to with a large puppet like the most taking place on that this was not the first I had walked across the Brooklyn Bridge in a crowd with a large That was on the of October in the from to as I helped two others with a large processional figure of the of built by the of This a major organized by Street, the that had taken over Park that a against inspiring actions the across the members to participate in the and I to with the City of New York’s my own But as I stood across from the to the for the and watching the crowds of to a small by with a wanted to carry the I me the pole her and those for her two to two other volunteers and our embarked across the by the puppet in front of me in the that followed of this figure within the the and of those in these two events were other not have been more like and the when the two walks took In before joining the with I to my ranks of in took turns in the of a of the surrounded by personnel and up the The were almost and into the only to be within minutes by a subsequent that with most being with Little Amal, I one of the to crowds along to the were no of only of at Amal’s presence and people taking there were also many who what it was all At this and other Amal events, I had several to about Amal’s project, them a more of puppetry in the as many this is one of the project’s Amal on her in the over a after the me with an of or I not of the and other Street only more and These and issues at the heart of other our Perhaps Amal’s to attention to them, from political or endeavors, and over another or an and Amal a of among and participants the at Puppet of which took place in just after Amal had the city, by its own parade of large from and Puppet and all with to and Puppet Amal as within the of engaged processional and Puppet has in the well as since the and large-scale at and or of the issues at hand, have the of to several of those who built socially committed as In the of the Puppet and in with its famous Day and in for its own the puppeteer and of of Puppetry by contrast Little Amal to her of large and and the effect of this might have added that, while and generally The Little Amal and present individuals with Amal out her to someone in the crowd and into their eyes, she is to make a The at the also turned to Amal had a mere her and meaning in the for her and her accompanying the taking these A was by in a New York Times in which she spectators to a photos a of But just put put in the walking with her. And and the to the cultural to is and how these continually our of the our to in our own as we them to experience into this ubiquitous cultural condition, Amal, and her be for our media the of as it in and might even constant as a of or at responding to the of puppetry in this At every Amal is responding to her our She is against the city’s our of photo after photo her of and even of these in to them, them in place to subsequent media of Amal might even be means the project to her and can for her entourage taking photos of her A large puppet, life, the of what she stands the two-and-a-half weeks of her nearly all of New York a and was at not also about and, more about Little Amal and her this project, puppetry and the concerns it was the artistic and I generally with that to about of my students were not only to Little Amal but to find out their not involved in the were of the While the where I Amal were in the parts of the I she and people in that, as a New I have even Each appearance had its own and some more or she connected with the of New of art project I can bringing to each her presence as an child at the of events her was the the people of this were all on creative and, in in this Amal, of might have had a very reception in other parts of the that are not as to her while she was as The In Greece, at her as she walked through the local to her from a of and in meant her had to be In France, the of to her of or just in a large puppet of a the of the arts in political and it is always that, while art can find many means to and to and of artistic it is also to them, in and of to the their Little Amal has about as much as one The real of when the real along with their and This is the very of New York in a place like New York, when of refugees as they we all to of how we their

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