I think stories are incredibly important, especially the ones we tell about our lives and our collective past. They make absolutely horrible experiences bearable and often meaningful. Pain without a purpose is terrifying. The Royal de Luxe tells stories to cities with giants. It is storytelling on a very grand scale.

Each time Royal de Luxe plays a new location – and this was their Scandinavian debut – Jean-Luc Courcoult, the company director, writes a story especially for the people of that place, a simple story that will reach deeply into their trove of archetypes yet be understood by children under 10. It must be performable by the Giants, too, who are between 20 and 40 feet high, made of carved wood and operated not only by cranes but by numerous actor-technicians manning pulleys and ropes, swarming all over the marionettes. Learning this, one might assume there was a lid on the expressive potential of the Giants. There is, but not in the way that springs to mind. And which is more important? What a giant marionette does, or how it makes you feel watching it? “For years, I wondered how one could tell a story to an entire town,” Courcoult has said. “On a plane to Rio, the idea of using out-size marionettes came to me… People have believed in giants since the year dot. Every culture on earth has stories about them. I find the giant more powerful than God or religion – because it is more make-believe yet more human.” [link]