CHILDISH GAMBINO WAS AT COACHELLA!?!?!?!??!!1111
i'm still shook wtf I was just vibing to tyler the creator and then i was like IS THAT DONALD GLOVER
it was.
I'm quaking.
earfquakin' even
that set was so god damn good wtf
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TOHO SPIRITED AWAY?? PLS GIVE ME THE DEETS
oh it was soooooooooo good i'm so happy i got a chance to see it!!! gorgeous design all around, there was no standout elements bc everything fit so well together. all the spirits + magical elements were done with traditional (japanese and western) style puppetry, so everything was articulated and manipulated by an operator, which had this really wonderful almost youth theatre vibe. a lot of times with shows that involve puppets, they'll try to make the puppets as advanced as possible to not make them 'childish' (see: war horse), but for something that's based heavily in folklore and IS a children's story, to me the only logical sense is to emphasize that particular angle. the puppets were also incredible, very well made and sooo accurate to the movie??? like impressively accurate. my faves were probably kamaji and haku? kamaji's six extra arms were each operated by a separate person who had one hand operating the elbow and one hand as the actual hand, so all eight hands were able to do everything, which mean there was some REALLY incredible choreography of just. all the stuff that he was doing, but also when he got up and walked it was soooooooo cool. and haku!!! he had two puppets actually, one 'full size' that was a big long foam articulated body that took i think four puppeteers, and there was a tiny haku that they used for the flying scenes that was basically just a little head and a ....idk what the actual technical term is but it was basically just a wind sock as the body on a big long pole so the puppeteer could essentially move him like you would a big ribbon! the scene were he first transforms and flies off was sooo pretty, the actor haku did a lil setup to a GORGEOUS spinning jump and when he landed he ducked down behind some of the chorus members and as he disappeared the tiny ribbon haku shot up from the same spot and started looping around.......... actual magic. also wow the actor playing haku was so pretty. and very tall. which i did not notice until the very end. i would not be suprised if he had ballet training bc tall and he had the ballet dancer chin/head posture. also the actor playing lin (also doublecast as chihiro's mom) was crazy hot. just so unbelievably hot. anyways. speaking of casting: noface as a popping dancer. UNREAL and incredible galaxy brained choice. he had a solo while they did a set change and WOW. spooky and gorgeous and also weirdly welcoming? really excellent job of embodying a sympathetic physicality that made it understandable why chihiro would let him in to the bath house in the first place. also for the curtain call he put the mask on the back of his head and literally did the bows backwards. insane. my ONLY complaint is that i didn't love noface's giant form, but that's mostly because years and years ago i saw a (different) puppet show with a grim reaper character that was very similar to giant noface (the telescoping neck + large body) and i literally thought at the time 'if you were going to do puppet noface that is exactly how you should do it', so 1) expectations 2) i'm pretty sure that version was done using quite a sophisticated extending mechanism, which would be antithetical to the rest of the puppets in the show, and 3) this giant noface was VERY big (probably at least 10-15 feet across? he was at least eight puppeteers with the original actor as the mask) so the logistics would not have worked. regardless. it is a very small complaint that literally no one else would have had unless they had seen the same show that i did in like. 2015. costumes were all unreal, the set was phenomenal; it actually took me WELL over an hour to figure out that the set literally stayed the same the entire time, it was just being rotated (it was on a turntable) and redressed + had a couple balconies flown in. also live orchestra?? in the set??????? i didnt even know they were THERE they had them behind a scrim on an upper level platform in the back and they pulled it up for curtain call and there was like. 15 ppl sitting back there????
ok but if i had to pick ONE thing that was my favourite, it would be that ALL the living things were played by someone alive. i know that sounds obvious, especialy for like. the dancing vases and the frog and the soot sprites, but even the PLANTS were puppets in their own way. like the hydrangea bushes that chihiro hides in at the beginning and the flower field that she and haku run through were done with chorus members wearing these beautiful flower head/chest/arm pieces. even the stone guardians at the tunnel at the beginning of the play were actors. it really underscored the magic of everything to have all the life be actually alive.
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Not sure if I wanna post pics of myself here yet but you have no idea how insane I got when I saw this from afar when walking to the theatre 😍
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