Top-secret Giant rehearsals are hush hush

The Lilliputians are going through their paces, maintaining a relentless and precise rhythm like slaves in a Roman galley.

Forward, ever forward, they tug on the ropes and pulleys that give gigantic legs the immense muscle-power needed to stride through city streets for hours at a time and to cover 14km over three days.

There is no slave master with the whip. Instead, there is the firm but friendly megaphone voice of Matthieu Bony counting the beat for the new recruits, 12 Perth gymnasts, dancers, puppeteers and actors putting their shoulders to the task next to more than 20 hardened veterans of Royal de Luxe.

Pair by pair, they clamber over the wheel arch of the customised support vehicle, grab a rope together and take a running jump to the ground. Like processional bellringers, their combined bodyweight compels the rise and fall of a giant leg. Left, right, left, right …

Welcome to the land of The Giants, a covert 10,000sqm site where the enigmatic and clande-stine Royal de Luxe has established the biggest and most secretive rehearsal room in Perth.

Inside a cavernous "shed", sparks fly into the noise-racked air as welders and metalworkers cut poles and adjust hardware shipped from France in nine containers for the performance next weekend.

"For every city there are a bunch of scenes which are created for the city, so when they get here this is when they adjust the objects for the specific site and the story," Royal de Luxe producer Gwenaelle Raux said. The scale of the operation is massive.

The rehearsal and construction area is as busy as an army parade ground before a military deployment. An ambulance officer remains on duty in case anything goes wrong.

At risk of being too florid, I can't help but compare the military-industrial complex feeding wars around the globe and an artistic-industrial complex like this seeking to conquer the world with beauty.

Are The Giants themselves in the house? Such are the demands to not shatter their mystique and magic, like flashing a torch on Santa on Christmas Eve, _The West Weekend _has been given access on the condition that we not say.

One can only presume that with less than a week before the Little Girl Giant and the Deep Sea Diver hit the streets that they must be nearly here. "Part of the magic of the show is that they are not here yet," Raux said.

"They are on their way."

Margot Courcoult, the daughter of Royale de Luxe impresario Jean-Luc Courcoult, is in the team of "Lilliputians" whose favourite child, the Little Girl Giant, celebrates 10 years since her first public appearance with the biggest parade Perth is likely to have seen.

"It is a family relationship with her, with all of us Lilliputians anyway," Margot Courcoult said.

"She is part of the family. We do not see her as a machine at all. When you see her, you see she has a proper soul and a proper life.

"We will celebrate her birthday by being in Perth. It is very weird to think it is 10 years. It doesn't feel like that but then it's the same when you have children."

She said part of the girl's "soul" came from the souls of her red velvet-clad operators, one reason why the impact of The Giants is so powerful.

"You've got 20 to 30 people's energy going into one thing, which also makes them seem bigger," she said.

Perth Festival operative Jeremy Hastings saw The Giants in their French home city of Nantes in 2011, as a spectator for two days and then a third day bashing on cymbals in the parade.

"It is a really special atmosphere to have that many people in the street, hundreds of thousands of people, all watching the same moment and following you around," he said.

"When we were doing the final salute and getting applause from all these people it was extraordinary."

Music director Michel Augier plays a key part of the street theatre experience, blasting out music with his band from the back of a truck that accompanies the colossal creatures.

He said the music was integral to the spectacle and ranged across rock, jazz, classical, atmospheric samples from each new location and the sound effects that mimicked movements.

"I have been busy sampling the sounds of Perth, the crazy screech of the cockatoos," Augier said.