Storytelling, theatre and what’s cool.

I just saw some awful theatre.  It was an evening of one-acts, and they were generally badly acted, badly written, and badly directed.  The actors, untutored in or incapable of the art of behaving truthfully on stage, were in most cases abandoned by playwrights or directors who had no idea of how to hold an audience's attention.  (I mean: you have to keep up the pace, and monologing actors shouldn't stare at the floor while they're talking.  Gunshots and shouting ought to happen for a reason.  And a tall box draped in green fabric makes a crap stand-in for a beanstalk.)
 
But before I left the house for my night of ennui, a popular link on YouTube caught my eye.  It showed a giant girl (that is, a giant marionette of a girl) getting up and moving about.  You could see a score of puppeteers (marionetters?) in Georgian-era red coats, swarming around the girl, heaving on ropes, but they weren't distracting; nor was the construction crane holding the doll upright, because the doll was beautifully made and moved with intention, mystery and elegance.
 
Sultan's Elephant Gallery.
Video of the Little Girl Giant.
 
Alright.  The folks who made The Little Girl Giant are clever and well-trained and someone gave them a lot of money to do what they did.  But you don't need that much of the first two to tell a story well.  You just need the imagination to see why the following is true, and the sense to know why it isn't enough:
 
From an interview with the event's creator:
 

You are careful to divulge as little content as possible about your shows. Is this to keep the dream alive?
I am very keen on the element of surprise. You can see this throughout my productions. In an open-air show, if I want to make a strong image appear on the right, I distract the public’s attention to the left. I hypnotise them so that nobody, even when it is in the open, understands how an enormous machine could appear from the left so suddenly. It’s like the big bang: it has appeared, that’s all. I value this effect tremendously: it’s like when you give somebody a present they’re not expecting and they are overcome. I hold the theatre in my arms and wish to offer it to people just at the right moment. I believe that this almost childish desire to please people by surprising them is a deciding factor in my work […]

 
Good Art is Hard.  We all know that.  But I wish that the basics, like truth, causality, and structure; surprise, tempo, and balance... were taught properly in school, just as we're taught good grammar and a sound vocabulary.   Oh...never mind.
 
But, really, I'm not complaining.  Really.  I lost three hours to these bad shows; but one of them was odd and hilarious and fun.  And the thought of that little girl giant makes me happy beyond words; I mean, my sound vocabulary doesn't half do it justice.  Not half.
 
Maybe someday I'll get to see it for myself.  Maybe someday you'll be there, with me.