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HERE

12-Foot Puppet Representing a Refugee Is Welcomed on the Upper West Side

September 19, 2022 | 3:32 PM - Updated on September 22, 2022 | 5:07 AM
in ART, NEWS
12
Reaching out to a well wisher in front of the Metropolitan Opera House while a band from Jazz at Lincoln Center plays from the balcony. Photographs by Peggy Taylor.

By Peggy Taylor

I didn’t quite know what to expect when a friend told me that a giant, 12-foot-high puppet named Little Amal was coming to the Upper West Side looking for her mother. Representing a ten-year old Syrian refugee, she has been searching for her mother since last July when she left the Turkey/Syria border, and traveled 8,000 miles, making stops in Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine. She even stretched out her bamboo cane hands at the Vatican for a handshake with the Pope. On September 14th, she made it to New York, and last Saturday to the Upper West Side.

Acknowledging the crowd’s welcome in front of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Considered by many to be one of the most ambitious public artworks ever attempted, Little Amal (“hope” in Arabic) is the focus of the theatrical project “The Walk,” and the brain child of Palestinian theater director Amir Nizar Zuabi, who wants to raise awareness about the plight of refugee children and asylum seekers in general.

Zuabi was inspired by the play, The Jungle, an immersive, theatrical event which explores the plight of refugees at a migrant camp in Calais, France, and tells the story of a 17-year-old Sudanese teenager who traveled thousands of miles across desert and ocean to reach the camp. After a highly successful showing in 2018, it returns to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in February 2023.

Shaking hands with well wishers next to David Geffen Hall.

According to Zuabi, “Little Amal is an excuse for communities to come together and be kind to a foreigner, and by so doing understand something about themselves and what there is to celebrate in their communities.” Little Amal has been welcomed with activities ranging from intimate community events to major street parties and city performances. For Stephen Daldry, one of “The Walk’s”producers, Little Amal symbolizes “not only the plight of millions of displaced children, but also their potential.”

Little Amal has not been universally welcomed. In Greece, which has a substantial immigrant influx from Libya, she was pelted with fruits, eggs, and stones. In Calais, France, home to the encampment depicted in “The Jungle,” she was refused a permit to walk along its beaches, but was eventually allowed to walk along one in a town close by. For detractors, ten-year-old Little Amal is not your typical Syrian refugee, whom, they say, is more likely to be a strapping thirty-year-old man. But, according to Lori Naughton, CEO of the charity, Choose Love, who accompanies Little Amal on many of her travels: “Only one percent of the places she’s visited have not embraced her. This is all about welcome, about opening up our hearts, our communities and our cities. I never realized how magical it would be.”

One of four puppeteers operating her, on stilts inside a cage of bamboo canes.

How would Little Amal be received in New York and in particular on the Upper West Side, which is facing an unexpected influx of migrants bussed here by Greg Abbott, governor of Texas?

When she arrived at John F. Kennedy airport on September 14th, she was serenaded by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and its children’s chorus. After that, she was treated like a rock star in Queens, then in Brooklyn, notably at St. Ann’s Warehouse, where “The Jungle” was produced, and later on at Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, and Times Square.

Banner unfurled in front of USS Maine Monument, by the group Rise and Resist.

On the Upper West Side, she began her walk at Columbus Circle’s USS Maine Monument, where members of the nonprofit Rise and Resist unfurled a black and white banner reading: “Seeking Asylum is Not a Crime.” She was joined by a jazz band playing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and by noted fashion and set designer, Machine Dazzle, dressed as the queen of a colony of bees. For him, “A bee colony is one of the most perfect examples of beings coming together for a cause. I wanted to do something colorful and playful,” he said.

Machine Dazzle and his colony of bees leading her along West 62nd Street.

As soon as the procession started from the Maine Monument, Upper West Siders showered Amal with cheers, waves, handshakes, and kisses as they followed her up Central Park West to Lincoln Center. I, too, joined the merry band of well wishers and felt as though I were one of the children following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Lincoln Center rolled out the red carpet for Little Amal, beginning with a spirited welcome from their jazz band from “Jazz at Lincoln Center,” which serenaded her from the balcony of the Metropolitan Opera House. After that, a chamber music ensemble accompanied her on her walk around the Paul Milstein Pool and Terrace, where she was treated to dance performances by the School of American Ballet and by the Kayla Farrish Dance Company.

Greeting ballerinas from the School of American Ballet.

Everywhere, fans young and old reached out to touch her, sing to her, dance with her. I didn’t realize how powerful and joyous it all would be and I quickly understood the point of the project—the creators’ hope that the welcome extended to Little Amal, the puppet, would transfer to flesh-and blood-immigrants arriving in our towns and on our shores.

Little Amal ended her Upper West Side tour at a private event at the American Museum of Natural History. She will conclude her Big Apple visit in early October with a visit to the Statue of Liberty.

Coincidentally, Little Amal’s visit to the Upper West Side coincided with Citizenship and Constitution Day, when newly naturalized immigrants took their oaths of citizenship at a ceremony at Lincoln Center.

Little Amal Walks NYC is a co-production between Walk Productions, St. Ann’s Warehouse and
The Handspring Puppet Company, a puppetry performance and design company based in Cape Town, South Africa, and noted for its work in the celebrated play, “War Horse.”

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12 Comments
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Rose F
Rose F
1 year ago

I wish I’d known she was coming. Would be so great to see her- she is indeed a rockstar.

4
Reply
Robin
Robin
1 year ago
Reply to  Rose F

Follow her website, she is visiting other spots in the city

1
Reply
rteplow
rteplow
1 year ago
Reply to  Robin

Here is the schedule: https://www.walkwithamal.org/events/

0
Reply
Pynchonfan
Pynchonfan
1 year ago

I like the concept but I find the puppet terrifying!

6
Reply
Huh
Huh
1 year ago
Reply to  Pynchonfan

I was thinking the same thing. Especially for some children.

1
Reply
DointIt
DointIt
1 year ago

What’s the definition of asylum?

2
Reply
Pat
Pat
1 year ago

Is this supposed to give us nightmares about refugees?

1
Reply
Holli
Holli
1 year ago

I was at Duffy Square on Fri & Lincoln Center on Sat. It was incredible & moving. We happened to be in Central Park on Sun at 81st when she went to the Playground. For those saying kids would be scared, they were not. Every kid I saw was in awe & reaching out to her. It’s a fantastic way to bring attention but I would’ve loved a more educational slant to some events.

2
Reply
s g
s g
1 year ago

This is a misrepresentation of the illegal aliens crossing the border, since the lions share are young men. Also, while it’s not a crime to seek asylum, there needs to be a valid reason, not just a bad economy at home and the lure of free stuff from Biden & Co.

5
Reply
Larry
Larry
1 year ago
Reply to  s g

If you know anything about Syria, you will know that Little Amal and millions of flesh-and-blood refugees have perfectly valid reasons to seek asylum. And everyone regardless of their country of origin has the right to request asylum and have their case judged on its merits, and not be turned away or trafficked from Texas and Florida to another state under false pretenses.

0
Reply
Newcavendish
Newcavendish
1 year ago

Well, farce has its place. Still, we need to confront the real political and sociological problems of uncontrolled immigration. De Santis’s stunt was repulsive, bu t it does draw attention to a migration crisis that the NYT and other media have refused to admit is a crisis (mainly because Fox News uses the word). We need a better thought-out, more comprehensive, more clear eyed, more humane and more enforceable immigration policy. Until we achieve the rule of law on migration we can’t expect to maintain it on other major issues. Stunts like flights to Martha’s Vineyard and puppets at Lincoln Center have the virtue of drawing attention to the magnitude of the problem. But now e need serious people to pay serious attention and develop a serious migration policy that is not based on romantic visions of the 19th Century or on right-wing disaster fantasies but on a real issue of tremendous magnitude.

2
Reply
Larry
Larry
1 year ago
Reply to  Newcavendish

I hope you’re not suggesting moral equivalence between the Martha’s Vineyard “stunt” and the Little Amal “stunt.”

1
Reply

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