La ruée vers l’or: Arctic Tall Tales

Tales on a Tabletop: Storytelling and Spectacle in Arctic Tall Tales

An Essay by Will Bixby

In the 1950s, Danish author Jørn Riel lived and worked in the Arctic expanse of northeast Greenland as a navigator and radio operator. After ten years of residing with explorers, hunters, and fur trappers, Riel adapted their exploits into a series of short stories titled Racontars Arctiques. Inspired by actual events, Riel’s tall tales so deftly portray the complex—and often violent—relationship between humans and nature, the surprisingly comedic moments of everyday life in the far north, and the emotional isolation and brotherly camaraderie that accompanies such a life that his stories have undergone numerous translations and adaptations. Most prominently, his stories were adapted into a series of graphic novels by Gwen de Bonneval and Hervé Tanquerelle, who deploy large swaths of dark shading and line work that alternates between frantic scratches and smooth curves to capture the emotional highs and lows of the explorers. Now, with the theater company La ruée vers l’or’s production of Arctic Tall Tales, Riel’s stories receive a third adaptation: from prose to still image to puppet. 

Told on a tabletop, Arctic Tall Tales follows the exploits of a group of fur trappers in Greenland in a series of fragmented vignettes. Three puppeteers (Jérémie Desbiens, Jean-François Beauvais, and Anne Lalancette) capture the full spectrum of life in the Arctic—from the mundane to the exotic—through their alternating use of Bunraku-style puppets and miniature objects. The fluctuation between the two modes of puppetry foregrounds the duality of intimacy and estrangement felt by the explorers, and it allows the production to explore a full range of emotions, from uproarious laughter to quiet tenderness. The larger foam puppets, carved with exaggerated features—oblong heads, large noses, and round bellies—have a lovable gruffness, often deployed for comedic effect. In one vignette, as the old trapper Museau steps outside for a (much-needed) bath, we watch the puppeteers work in tandem to peel each layer of clothing off his body before Museau plunges himself into a barrel of warm water. His expressive, crumpled face and plush body exude a warm oafishness, and we can’t help but laugh as he scrubs himself down while singing a jaunty tune. 

As these puppets are each controlled by the three puppeteers in tandem—one on the legs, one on the left arm and body, and the other on the right arm and head—they model a form of communal attention. However, the production cleverly uses the Bunraku form to also simulate the isolating and lonely reality of life in the Great North. A gripping example is a short vignette in which one of the trappers, Mads Madsen, sits alone on a bench in his cabin as a dark cloud of doubt begins to storm through his mind. As each puppeteer animates a portion of his body, they also vocalize the inner thoughts circling through his mind: “Did you remember to tie up the dogs?”; “Have you thought about your wife, Emma, lately?” Once an image of communal care, the puppeteers now strike a sinister tone as their physical presence and vocal prodding bring him deeper into despair. Though the puppeteers animate Mads Madsen, bringing him to life, they simultaneously tear him down. 

The tabletop expertly communicates a sense of interior and exterior space. As Mads Madsen is tormented by his inner thoughts, the confined space of the table creates a sense of isolation and claustrophobia that mirrors the interior of his mind. At the same time, the tabletop illustrates the endless expanse of the exterior space—the Arctic wilderness itself. In one moment, the table serves as the interior cabin space for the explorers. In the next, the table is swept clean, draped with a white bedsheet, and populated with miniature figurines to pull our attention outwards. For example, as the trappers head out into the wilderness to hunt, a miniature dog sled bounds across the snowbanks as increasingly smaller and smaller log cabins are placed in a receding pattern, simulating civilization slowly fading from view. By shrinking the puppets down in size, the production zooms our attention outwards to the endlessly large and powerful force of nature. 

While the mode of puppetry fluctuates between mid-size Bunraku-style puppets and miniature figurines, and the environment shifts between the endless exterior and confining interior, the one constant throughout is the visibility of the puppeteers. This is essential to the production as it emphasizes the act of storytelling rather than the stories themselves; how the story is told pulls our focus and draws us in. An excellent example of this is the role of the musician and Foley artist, Alexandre Harvey, who provides a vivid soundscape throughout the performance. Stationed downstage of the playing space, Harvey provides instrumentation and sound effects with an arsenal of percussive instruments, guitars, and everyday objects. A plastic sheet is squeezed to simulate the sound of snow crunching beneath a boot, and a wad of bubble wrap is caressed to evoke the sound of a crackling fire. 

Most striking is when Harvey’s Foley works in tandem with the puppets’ movements onstage. As the puppets fire their rifles at a wild bird, Harvey pops a bag of potato chips, sending both feathers—and chips—raining across the stage; when the puppets carve open their prey to pull out its innards, Harvey plunges his hand into a pail of water at his feet, adding a wet squelching accompaniment to the visual of tossed organs. The effect is a fusion of two forms of puppetry, one aural and one visual, that combine to fully bring the story to life while simultaneously calling our attention to the fact that what we’re watching is just that: a story. 

Riel’s original series leaves the reader wondering if what they’ve read is entirely truthful, purely fictional, or some combination of the two. Arctic Tall Tales understands that it is not veracity but how the story is told that truly brings it to life. How La ruée vers l’or tells this story is nothing short of spectacular.