Art meets activism in Congo with ‘The Herds’ performance

In the Kinshasa Botanical Garden, a troupe of cardboard animals – monkeys, a gorilla, leopards, a giraffe – stand to 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 theatre performance made up of cardboard puppet animals that flee from the Democratic Republic…