“Erik had this really interesting idea to put puppeteers on stilts,’’ Grindstaff recalls by phone, “so they could have the full range of the stage. And for some reason we were both picturing this all in white. And I had been wanting to make a ship, which was kind of a transformation puppet. So we said, ‘Where is it always white, with just one isolated black ship?’ And then we remembered these iconic images [taken by photographer] Frank Hurley from the Shackleton expedition.’’
The pair’s research took them to Dartmouth College, where they spent weeks poring over the 700-page diary that expedition member Thomas Orde-Lees kept - “everything from the temperature and wind direction that day to what they ate to what was happening with the ship mechanically, and then his emotional experience of what was happening,’’ says Grindstaff.
Soon they were making a grant application for an expedition of their own to Antarctica.
“It took me six months to fill it out,’’ Grindstaff remembers. “We went in January 2010, for about three weeks. We were stationed on the coast, at McMurdo [Station], but we went to the geographic South Pole as well, and it was about 18 below, which they said was unseasonably warm. But we did go in an underground ice tunnel, and it was 68 below there, and at that point you could feel the liquid on your eyeballs freeze, so you quickly put your goggles back on.’’
For visitors, Sanko explains, all clothing is issued by the US government, “because it’s so cold, you couldn’t possibly dress yourself. But think about the original explorers, who had only cotton and wool. They were wearing their tweeds.’’
