I now have two parallel careers.” A regular producer on the films of Stephen Frears, she also produced Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics and is one of three trustees of the international charity Choose Love, which is also a partner on The Walk. “I decided then and there that I had to do whatever I could to help. “The day I went to the Jungle changed my life,” says Tracey Seaward. For all four producers of Little Amal, it was a lightbulb moment. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/ReutersĪs news of the vast tent city spread, volunteers flocked to the northern French port to see how they could help the 10,000 refugees who were, at its height, estimated to be camping there, hoping to cross the Channel to the UK. It is in that camp, back in 2015, that the creation story of Little Amal begins.Īn aerial view of the Calais refugee camp in 2016. Once it is up and running, weather, mechanical glitches and the bureaucracy of borders will all have to be managed on the hoof by the 25-strong entourage that will accompany Little Amal over land and sea, by boat, lorry and on foot.įor 18 years director of London’s Young Vic, David Lan is one of four producers who have masterminded The Walk, along with director Stephen Daldry, film producer Tracey Seaward and the theatre company Good Chance, which was founded as a creative response to the Calais refugee camp that became notorious as the Jungle. Border closures caused by the Covid pandemic forced a four-month postponement of the walk, while lockdowns made fundraising even harder than usual, so, with just three weeks to go, the project is still £40,000 short of target. It’s just one of many surprises already being sprung by a project in which nothing can be taken for granted. “Except,” he sighs, “I’ve just been told that it’s actually probably closer to 9,000km, which was a bit of a surprise.” Basically, he says, The Walk is a single theatre show that will take place over four months on an 8,000km stage. On the sidelines sits producer David Lan, who gives a sense of the scale of the undertaking. Despite the surreal comedy of seeing her statuesque torso teetering around on a pair of little human legs, already she can convey shock, shyness and curiosity through the lowering of her eyes and the graceful undulation of her arms.Įven before she hits the road she has been creating quite a stirwith celebrities including Gillian Anderson, Anish Kapoor, Gary Lineker and Chiwetel Ejiofor having signed up as publicity ambassadors.
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They are gentle and respectful as they take turns at learning how to create a personality through the movement of her long limbs. Nine young puppeteers will operate her, in rotating teams of three, with one on each hand and one on stilts, who will also control her facial expressions via a complicated system of strings known as “the harp”. Little Amal taking a test walk on the South Bank in London. She will bear a single message, on behalf of all the thousands of displaced children who will come out to meet her along the way: “Don’t forget about us.” She’s a puppet, who will be enabled to make her epic walk by relays of puppeteers, several of whom are themselves refugees. Little Amal’s intercontinental odyssey will be hard to miss in the eight countries whose borders she will cross between July and November, because she is 3.5 metres (nearly 12 feet) tall. The Walk will face down international Covid restrictions in a visionary act of solidarity with the plight of refugees, defiance of the borders that put their lives in danger, and belief in the humanity of ordinary people faced with a global humanitarian crisis. She is the central, and only, character in a spectacularly ambitious theatre project. Little Amal is nine years old and is searching for her mother, who went off to find food and never returned. O n the last Tuesday of July, a big little girl will step out into a Turkish city, a few miles from the Syrian border, to begin an 8,000km trek to Manchester.
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