TheHandspring Puppet Company is a South Africanpuppetry performance and design company. It was established in 1981 by Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones, Jon Weinberg, and Jill Joubert,^[2] and is based inCape Town,South Africa.

Jones and Kohler met at theMichaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town.^[2] At first, they designed puppets for children-targeted productions, which Jones initially disliked. Kohler "introduced him [Jones] to theWest African tradition of puppetry for adults,"^[3] working with Malcolm Purkey andBarney Simon, among others.^[4]

Some notable productions include:

Esther van Ryswyk directedEpisodes of an Easter Rising (1985), a play based on David Lytton's radio special of the same name.^[5] It told the story of two white lesbian women who became part of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle. It premiered at theBaxter Theatre in Cape Town and toured to the National Arts Festival inMakhanda (formerly Grahamstown), WITS University Theatre in Johannesburg and to the 7th World Festival of Puppet Theatre inCharleville-Mézières,France.^[4]

In 1997, they worked withWilliam Kentridge (director) andJane Taylor (scriptwriter) onUbu and the Truth Commission.^[4] The play draws extensively onAlfred Jarry's absurdist productionUbu Roi (1896). It fuses the chaos of the Ubu legend with original testimony from witnesses at the post-apartheidTruth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It highlights Kentridge's work in the evolution of truth through a combination of fictional narratives and facts.^[6] The production premiered in Weimer, Germany on 17 June 1997. Over the next two years, it toured to 38 theatres in South Africa, Europe and the USA.^[7]

Tall Horse (directed by Marthinus Basson in 2004) was a collaboration between the Sogolon Puppet Troupe ofMali and Handspring Puppet Company. The production was based on historical events: in 1827 thePasha of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, sent a giraffe as a gift toKing Charles X of France. The play dramatised the giraffe's journey across the Mediterranean Sea and the politics underlying it. With initial funding from theJohn F. Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C,Tall Horse was also supported byAnglo Gold Ashanti, a mining company with interests in both Mali and South Africa.^[8]

The Handspring Puppet Company achieved critical acclaim whenWar Horse featuring life-size puppets they had created, premiered at theRoyal National Theatre inSouth Bank, London, on 17 October 2007.^[9] Kohler and Jones worked with directorsMarianne Elliott andTom Morris and choreographerToby Sedgwick^[10] to design and construct life-sized horse puppets, each controlled by three actors. Two actors operate the legs and a third controls the head and neck, with all three actors providing a variety of sound effects.^[11] The company won anOlivier Award,Evening Standard Theatre Award andLondon Critics' Circle Theatre Award.^[12][13][14] The show transferred to theWest End on 28 March 2009,^[15] and on 15 March 2011, it premiered onBroadway at theVivian Beaumont Theater in New York City.^[16] The play has been performed globally to nearly eight million people worldwide.^[17]

The company collaborated withNeil Bartlett andRae Smith onOr You Could Kiss Me, which opened at London'sNational Theatre on 5 October 2010, for a six-week season. The show has been described as "an intimate history of two very private lives, lived in extraordinary times". It was loosely based on the lives of Kohler and Jones, and speculated on their future circumstances when both men reach the age of 85.^[18]

• Unmasking the Puppet —1987 This exhibition opened at the UNISA Gallery in Pretoria and toured to theJohannesburg Art Gallery, the Durban Art Museum, the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, and theSouth African National Gallery in Cape Town.^[1]
• Episodes 2001–2003 Presented in various venues across South Africa, this installation included puppets from seven productions created over 16 years. Episodes represented a retrospective of Handspring's work. The exhibition was sponsored by theGoodman Gallery.^[19]
• Patrimony 2004–2005 An exhibition of Bamana Puppets from Mali, featured puppets from the extensive family collection ofYaya Coulibali. It toured South Africa.
• At Arms Length – The Art of African Puppetry – 2006 Produced by the Museum for African Art (now known asThe Africa Center, New York), this exhibit presented nearly 100 animated puppets, marionettes and puppet sculptures used in traditional and contemporary theatrical performances from Handspring and the Sogolon Puppet Troupe from Mali.
• The Puppet Show – 2008 Produced by theInstitute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA at thePennsylvania State University and theFrye Art Museum in Seattle. Here the kinetic work of leading contemporary artists was set off against a backdrop of more puppeteers from the world of professional theatre.^[20]
• KKNK National Art Festival – 2011 Selected as a featured visual artist for a solo exhibition at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, held annually in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, Handspring Puppet Company exhibited puppets featured in performances in the preceding 2 years that were in line for further international touring.^[19]
• National Theatre Gallery London – 2012 This exhibition explained the puppet-making process for War Horse.
• Circa Gallery, Johannesburg – 2016 An exhibition of Joey and Topthorn, characters fromWar Horse, together with portraits of puppets in the Handspring archives which Kohler had realised as editioned linocut prints.

2007Evening Standard Awards

Best Design (Rae Smith and the Handspring Puppet Company, winner)

2007Critics' Circle Theatre Awards

Best Designer (Basil Jones, Adrian Kohler, Rae Smith and the Handspring Puppet Company,winner)

2008Laurence Olivier Awards

Best Set Design (Rae Smith, Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler,winner)

2011Tony Awards

Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones won the Special Tony Award forWar Horse.

2011Outer Critics Circle Awards

Outer Critics Circle Special Achievement Award for "Puppet Design, Fabrication and Direction forWar Horse"^[21][22]

2012 – Honorary Doctorate of Literature Kohler and Jones both received an honorary doctorate in literature from theUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa.^[23]

2018 – John F. Kennedy Gold Medal Kohler and Jones received the John F. Kennedy Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts at a ceremony held at theZeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.^[24]

• Kentridge, William. "Director's Note". InUbu and the Truth Commission, by Jane Taylor, viii–xv. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2007.
• Jones, Basil, and Adrian Kohler. "Puppeteers' Note". InUbu and the Truth Commission, by Jane Taylor, xvi–xvii. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2007.

Media related toHandspring Puppet Company at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• War Horse on Stage: Official Site

• Entertainment companies of South Africa
• Companies based in Cape Town
• Culture of Cape Town
• Laurence Olivier Award winners
• Tony Award winners
• Puppet troupes
• Arts organizations established in 1988
• Recipients of the Molteno medal
• Puppetry in South Africa

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from February 2020
• Use South African English from November 2012
• All Wikipedia articles written in South African English
• Commons category link is on Wikidata