Skylight’s ‘Beast’ puppet a giant thing of beauty
Massive prop adds twist to old opera
What’s a theater company to do when it can’t find an eight-foot-tall tenor to play the role of Azor (the Beast) in “Beauty and the Beast?” Build one, of course.
The Skylight Music Theatre prop shop looks like a home for wayward magical creatures these days, thanks to some wildly creative puppet construction for the company’s upcoming production of Andre Gretry’s “Beauty and the Beast” (“Zemire et Azor”).
“It’s possible, in a fantastical story, to push the fantastical further if you use puppetry,” James Ortiz, the production’s Obie Award-winning stage director and scenic designer, explained in a recent conversation. “Materials, time and imagination are the only limitations.”
Ortiz and music director Shari Rhoads created a new English-language adaptation of the 1771 opera, which was written when Mozart was about 15. They have kept the essence of the story intact, but, according to Ortiz, removed some creakier elements of the plot.
“The opera is normally done with a tenor wearing a full mask until the final moments, when he is turned back into a prince,” Ortiz explained.
Like all fairy tales, “Beauty and the Beast” requires the audience to leave some of their concept of reality at door, allowing themselves a suspension of disbelief until the final curtain falls.
Ortiz referred to putting a fairy tale on the stage as “creating a heightened universe.” With a background in puppetry that dates back to his childhood, and an Obie Award for puppetry design for “The Woodsman” (a play he also wrote), the idea of using puppets as some of the characters in “Beauty” was not much of a leap at all.
But, Ortiz said, to make the idea work, the Azor puppet “would have to be emotional and alive, and be more dynamic than an actor could be.”
Enter Lisa Schlenker, Skylight properties director.
“Most people hear the word puppet and they automatically think Kermit and Miss Piggy, because Henson’s puppets are icons and they’ve been famous for decades,” she said. “But we know from ‘Avenue Q’ that puppets