For the first time in nine years, the life-size puppets created in Cape Town for acclaimed productions of War Horse around the world are lying idle.
They will be back - the show will tour the UK in 2017 and 2018 - but in the meantime, enter The Firebird.
With more than a decade of puppetry under her belt, much of it spent leading War Horse's Handspring Puppet Company, Janni Younge is an undisputed master of this "skilled and specific art form", as she puts it.
Yet her new production has not been an easy beast to tame. It will run at Artscape for four performances this month before heading to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and a tour of the US.
The adaptation of the Stravinsky ballet is Younge's first time working in two vastly different mediums: puppetry and dance.
"What we rely on in contemporary theatre puppetry is the nuances of everyday life to give the puppet a grounding in reality, because everybody knows it's not real," she said. "Now ... dance is a very often highly abstract expressive form."
Merging those forms was "challenging, but not unsolvable". Younge oversees 14 cast members - three veteran puppeteers and 11 dancers with no puppetry experience.
The rehearsals have taken their toll. Many cast members have been forced to take time off due to injuries caused by strain and tension. "Dancing is hard on the body. But now you're dancing with a 3m stick, which your body's not used to."
Like Joey, the steed in War Horse, most of The Firebird puppets need multiple puppeteers. The bird puppet, for instance, needs five cast members.
"If those five people are not perfectly co-ordinated, there'll be moments where one wing takes off before the other wing. It just breaks it. You can't invest your energy in half an illusion."
The production will climax with one of the largest puppets she has built: the dragon, a fire-breathing behemoth with a 12m wingspan that weighs 250kg.
