MEET THE PUPPET MASTER
Wakefield native took world stage
If you were among the massive global audience that tuned in to the opening ceremonies of the Pyeongchang Games, chances are you’ve already been introduced to the work of Nicholas Mahon.
Mahon, who grew up outside of Wakefield in the village of Farrellton, Que., is the designing mind behind the large-scale puppets featured in the lavish opening ceremonies. Now based in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mahon was tasked with bringing to life some of the most significant symbols in Korean culture, known as The Guardians — the White Tiger, Blue Dragon, Turtle, Phoenix and Bear Woman of Korean lore.
Mahon designed the puppets and trained more than 100 performers, most of them Korean soldiers and students, to operate 85 puppets during the opening ceremony.
“It was a completely surreal experience,” said Mahon from his Brooklyn workshop.
“By the end of it all, it really was their show. So to see the puppets become real living, breathing things, with the music, the scenery, the projections, to have that all come together and have 30,000 people in the stadium watching, and tens of millions of people around the world watching, you really can’t wrap your head around it. It’s just too big … for a little boy from Farrellton.”
And as grand as the spectacle was, Mahon himself had humble beginnings. “Growing up in a very remote area, there wasn’t the direct access to cultural events or arts, so having Sesame Street in the living room every day was hugely influential, it was really inspiring,” he said.
Mahon studied fine arts at Dawson College in Montreal, then returned home to study animation at the Ottawa School of Art.
“I was always trying to find a way to tell a story, to create a world and create characters. I always thought animation was what I wanted to do, but I realized I liked doing more than just drawing. And with puppets, you have to be able to draw really well, but you also have to be able to sculpt and paint and sew, you have to act and do voices. … And the fact it was this kind of weird, fringe thing that was kind of exciting, all of that was sort of drawing me to it.”
Mahon jumped into the weird, wonderful world of puppetry following a chance encounter with noted American production designer Michael Curry, who was in Montreal at the time, workshopping puppets for Cirque du Soleil.
Mahon honed his craft under Curry at his Portland, Ore. workshop, then established his own company based in Brooklyn.
“Puppetry is such a niche thing, so you want to go where the work is, try to cobble a career together, and so I started working with Blue Man Group, then I got to work on Sesame Street — the very show that I watched when I was a kid,” Mahon said. “Here I was working on The Count, working on Big Bird. It was totally surreal.”
Mahon and Curry began to collaborate on their designs, and together produced the opening ceremonies for the 2015 European Games. “We really got caught up in it,” Mahon said.
Last year, Mahon got a call from South Korea’s Olympic ceremonies production team, and before long he was poring over pencil-sketched concept renderings for the mythical creatures he would eventually bring to life.
“Because it’s an international audience, you’re telling stories and characters and traditions of a certain culture through visuals, and not dialogue. These are really great visual opportunities to do what we do,” he said.
Jet-setting between Brooklyn, South Korea and Malaysia, where the puppets were constructed, Mahon worked first as a designer, then a builder, then a director.
“Because it required so many performers, and they didn’t have puppeteers, I was working with inexperienced performers to turn them into puppeteers — to try to get natural movement, to make them feel comfortable, and comfortable emotionally because a lot of them were soldiers, and this is a very strange thing for them. So a big part of my job was just to get them to relax and just play around.”
Then, as the opening ceremonies approached, it was Mahon’s turn to step back, relax, and enjoy the show he created. “You get to do really big spectacles, and your audience is so big,” Mahon said. “It’s almost beyond what you can conceive.”
(To) have 30,000 people in the stadium watching, and tens of millions of people around the world watching, you really can’t wrap your head around it.