Even though Mikey Brett helped develop Circus 1903's elephant puppets Queenie and Peanut, he's still taken in by the illusion they create.
During each performance as he waits offstage to make an entrance as Peanut, there's a moment that Queenie seems like a live African Elephant.
"Her ears flap and I just think she's real, she looks so real," Brett told AAP.
The giant puppets have travelled with Circus 1903 for performances around the world, after its world premiere in Australia in 2016.
Following a run at the Sydney Opera House in December, the show is playing at Arts Centre Melbourne in January, also featuring illusionists, contortionists, and balancing acrobats.
The show is full of nostalgia, a look back to the golden age of circus, said David Williamson, who plays ringmaster Willy Whipsnade.
"It was the biggest day of the year when the circus came to town, schools and factories closed, everybody rushed down to the rail yard to watch the spectacle," he said.
While some of the circus acts are based on clever illusions, other feats are all too real.
At a preview on Thursday, acrobats performed extraordinary flips and somersaults on the teeterboard, also known as the Korean plank - an apparatus that resembles a playground seesaw.
Circus 1903 performers are award-winning artists at the top of their fields, said Williamson, from countries including Ethiopia, Ukraine, France and the UK.
Brett was part of the team that used advanced engineering to develop puppets for the 2007 National Theatre production War Horse, a production which led to a resurgence in the art of puppetry worldwide, and influenced the puppetry in Circus 1903.
"Puppetry is a really ancient art form and it's always been seen as a fringe art form, something for kids or a bit unserious," said Brett.
But it's possible to tell emotional stories through using puppets, he said, such as Peanut's attempts to succeed as a circus elephant, despite being young and a bit mischievous.
The Peanut puppet weighs 30 kilos, while the Queenie puppet was modelled on the largest elephant ever discovered, and her head alone weighs 60 kilos.
Queenie takes three strong puppeteers on stilts to operate, each of them strapped in with harnesses, and a fourth person operating her trunk.
Yet those watching are more than happy to believe there is a live African elephant onstage, just like in a circus performance from the turn of the last century, said Brett - all part of a game of make-believe between performers and audiences.
"I always think of theatre as a game that we are all playing together, up on stage we are pretending to do something, and the audience are believing that it's real, it's a game that we all play."
Circus 1903 is on at Arts Centre Melbourne's State Theatre from Wednesday until January 14.
