
In the Kinshasa Botanical Garden, a troupe of cardboard animals – monkeys, a gorilla, leopards, a giraffe – stand at attention in a clearing. Their handlers, puppeteers dressed in black, begin to move slowly through the woods, eventually picking up speed and breaking out into a run.
These were the first steps of “The Herds,” a moving theater performance made up of cardboard puppet animals that flee from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Arctic Circle in a bid to bring attention to the climate crisis.