A gigantic fire-breathing dragon making its way down the street? The stuff of children’s folklore, you’d say. Well, François Delarozière, the founder of La Machine has made this possible by roping in artists, technicians and theatre designers for building theater objects, that include this dragon.
People usually get their thrills in amusement parks, wherex they need to buy tickets and are confined within their boundaries. La Machine countered this by not only creating mammoth moving animals and objects but also displaying them in public places as part of the performance by its theater group.
For creating such mammoth beasts, La Machine has established two workshops in France, one in Nantes and the other in Tournefeuille. The workshops are equipped with panoramic viewpoints for those keen on watching how these ‘beasts’ are assembled before they’re taken out into the public domain.
La Machine started out by creating its first ‘mechanical robot’, Le Grand Elephant, in 2007 and followed it up by several others. The company’s aim is to give the people their thrills not only by their theatrical performances but also with their monumental machines.
The company’s latest offering was a 25-meter-long, 10-meter-high fire-breathing mechanical dragon that weighed a whopping 72 tons. The dragon wandered in the port city of Calais, France, for three days and had every citizen awestruck by its menacing appearance. It needed 17 people to operate and control it. This was La Machine’s street theater performance that was enacted on the Sea Front, Calais-Nord and Saint-Pierre.
How such a mechanical beast was created was explained by Pauline David, the Digital Communication Manager of La Machine, in an interview to boredpanda.com, “The idea for each mechanic animal first comes in the form of a sketch drawn by François Delarozière. For Calais – a windswept city between the sea and the earth – François Delarozière wanted a mythological creature that’s a mix of the elements – fire, water, air, and earth. You can see the antics of this dragon on La Machine’s Instagram page.
According to Delarozière, people and their skills are the very essences of the creative process.
Compagnie La Machine: Website | Instagram