Where to watch La Machine (and how to get through downtown when it's on)

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Long Ma rests outside city hall. He will awaken at 10 a.m. Friday. (Devyn Barrie/OttawaStart.com)[/caption]

La Machine, a mechanical street theatre production, will take over the downtown core from July 27-30.

It will probably be hard to miss these dozen-or-so metres tall mechanical creatures roaming around in the streets, but as a helpful guide here’s the schedule from Ottawa 2017: _ (Long Ma is the dragon-horse and Kumo is the spider) _ [caption id=“attachment_74263” align=“alignright” width=“312”]

Kumo asleep atop the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica on Thursday, before awakening at 8 p.m. She can reach up to 13 metres tall when crawling. (Devyn Barrie/OttawaStart.com)[/caption] ** DAY 1: Thursday, July 27 ** 8 pm – Kumo awakens near the National Gallery of Canada ** DAY 2: Friday, July 28 ** 10 am – Long Ma awakens at City Hall

10:30 am – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from City Hall

2 pm – Kumo Walkabout: departs from the National Gallery

2 pm – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from the National Gallery

8 pm – Kumo Walkabout: departs from the Shaw Centre

8 pm – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from Confederation Park ** DAY 3: Saturday, July 29 ** 11 am – Kumo Walkabout: By Ward Market

11 am – Long Ma Walkabout: ByWard Market

3 pm – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from the ByWard Market

3:10 pm – Kumo Walkabout: departs from the ByWard Market

8: 30 pm – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from Confederation Park

9:30 pm – _ STATIC SCENE _ : Kumo and Long Ma at the Supreme Court of Canada ** Day 4: Sunday, July 30 ** 2:30 pm – Kumo Walkabout: departs from the Supreme Court of Canada

3 pm – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from the Supreme Court of Canada

8:30 pm – Long Ma Walkabout: departs from the Chaudière Falls

9 pm – _ STATIC SCENE _ : Kumo and Long Ma at the Canadian War Museum

** Related: ** ** What 350,000 people did when they visited Rideau Hall last year. **

A swath of downtown and the ByWard Market will be closed to traffic to make them pedestrian-only zones for the purposes of watching the machines.

The City provided these maps to navigate the closures:

Some streets will alternate between open and closed during the day. A full list is on ottawa.ca .

Parking lots are expected to fill up, the City said.

OC Transpo buses will detour or experience intermittent delays as the show goes on – delays will be posted to Twitter or via email alerts . _ If you liked this post, consider subscribing to our free newsletter Etcetera . Every Thursday, we will send you a roundup of events for the coming week. _ _ Correction: An earlier version of this story mixed up the names of the characters. Kumo is the spider and Long Ma is the dragon-horse. We regret the error and ask Long Ma to refrain from incinerating us. _