Royal de Luxe is a French mechanical marionette street theater company. They were founded in 1979 by Jean Luc Courcoult. Based in Nantes, the company has performed in France, Belgium, England, Germany, Iceland, Chile, Australia and Mexico. It’s an unusual sight for a busy shopping street on a Saturday morning; in the window of a department store, a mannequin lies crumpled on the floor with a bullet between her eyes, the glass pane shattered in front of her. Across the street, high on a building, a puppet sniper hunches over with his red laser sight still trained on his victim. Twenty-two members of the Royal de Luxe team are busily involved in changing the displays after the close of each store, so the next day residents awake to find the story in each window has developed. The tales include ‘Nightmare of the Puddle’ at Unity collection, a drink-sodden man who appears to be gradually melting into his own legs, and the ‘Closing-Down Sale’ at David Lawrence, where news of the shop’s imminent closure (in the story, not in real life) sends the plastic-people into a furious rampage. Take a look at these exhibition of mannequins
