Animal Lovers Web Forum

The current show in production is Circus 1903, but there have been others that used puppets.
I saw War Horse on stage and they were able to tell the story of WW1 horses without using and endangering any animals.
The Lion King also used puppets. It was an amazing show.
This is a very creative and safe way to have animals in productions.

http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0

These puppets may be a very real solution to the need to have animals in shows. In some shows the animals would be at risk.
Certainly we don't want to see elephants in circuses anymore.  The horse puppets in War Horse became very real to us. Maybe more than real horses because they could use the puppets in ways that they couldn't use real horses. They could use the puppets to tell the story and show the dangers the horses faced. It was gripping and no actual horses were hurt. It is a total win-win situation.
I know that cat and dog puppets might not work out the same, but I think we should consider them more often in film making and stage productions.

It's quite an interesting idea.
For some shows, a puppet dog or cat would be perfect, and add humour to the situation.
With movies, there is always the option of combining animation with actors, and when this is well done, the movie is beautiful! For some stories, this would work well.

It would solve a lot of problems we have with animals being used in performances. Certainly for movies they can computer generate a lot of animal performances.

On stage the puppets are incredible. War Horse as a stage production was stunning and you really felt like you were there on the battle field. No movie could have the same effect. The movie used real horses. The stage performance used the puppets.
The seemed more real than a real horse would have been.

They could not have safely used horses in the production.

Many performances would be better with puppets. Puppet cats and dogs could be so well done. I hope they consider the option in some performances.