Fifty buffalo puppets will roam Brooklyn and Manhattan streets in September
May the skies not be cloudy that day.
Shows and Exhibitions
There may no longer be deer and antelope playing in downtown Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, but 50 life-size buffalo puppets will roam the city over two days in September.
The public art production, Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi, is a project of St. Ann's Warehouse and The Walk Productions and is scheduled for September 19 and 20, the organizers said. Exact times and locations have not been announced.
Director Amir Nizar Zuabi created the work in partnership with elders from the Lenape and Lakota tribes. Zuabi is artistic director of The Walk Productions, the company behind Little Amal, the 12-foot puppet of a Syrian refugee girl that St. Ann's and The Walk brought to all five boroughs in 2022.
The herd will stop at sites the organizers call historically significant, where actors, civic leaders, gospel choirs, dance troupes, marching bands and tribal ceremonies are set to perform, according to the announcement. Organizers describe the project as one of the largest public art spectacles in the United States this year.
"The land that we call America today has been here for far more than 250 years, and this production memorializes that," Zuabi said in the announcement.
"The United States presents great hope, promise, and potential, as well as a history of destruction and loss. In this moment, we have a civic duty to come together as a community of global citizens to usher in a new chapter in America's history, one that learns from its past, with empathy and respect for the land and all humans living on it."
The buffalo, the national mammal of the United States, was hunted to near extinction in the late 1800s and later revived through conservation and Native-led efforts. The organizers frame that history against the country's 250th anniversary this year.
The animal is central to the Lakota and other Plains tribes. Its staged return to New York also falls ten years after the Dakota Access Pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which began in April 2016 and drew Lakota tribes and thousands of others opposed to the pipeline's route through sacred land and beneath the Missouri River.
The announcement does not mention the protests.
Zuabi conceived the work with Bryan Doerries, artistic director of Theater of War Productions, as creative director. Karen Brooks Hopkins, the founder of KBH Arts and former president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is a co-producer.
The team also includes Music Director Adam Shore, Nonesuch Records President David Bither and Immediate Medium Artistic Director JJ Lind.
The Cape Town collective Ukwanda Puppets designed the puppets, which will be fabricated and assembled at St. Ann's in Brooklyn Bridge Park in August under puppetry director Craig Leo, the organizers said. Puppeteers will train there before the walks in September.
The project invites 150 New Yorkers to perform inside the puppets, with others welcome to join the herd as it moves through the city.
"We are inviting New Yorkers to reflect and appreciate nature, our land, and our power to heal and renew," said Susan Feldman, founder and artistic director of St. Ann's Warehouse.
"The story of the American buffalo reminds us of the near extinction of a majestic creature, and it acknowledges a magnificent human effort to rewild them. It represents the worst of us and the best of us."
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