Falling Down the Puppetry Rabbit Hole

A funny thing happened at the last show that I was a vendor at. First of all, it was the worst of the shows that I’d done so far, attendance was low as it was at a college but during spring break, and it was the first show where I didn’t at least break even. But one person that came to our table noticed the Gritty 3D print I had made, and remarked on it and said that she was one of the people that helped design and create Gritty. My wife and I, being big fans of Gritty, were pretty excited. It turns out this person is a puppeteer and makes puppets and had a table not far from ours.

We got to talking for a while, and we ended up buying one of her puppets. Somewhere along the line she mentioned she’s a part of the Greater Philadelphia Area Puppetry Guild. So we looked that up on our phones and started reading about that. We saw there was a Puppetry Day celebration happening in a month, and we decided to go (it didn’t hurt that Joel Hodgeson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame was going to be there). We went, had a great time, bought more puppets, and started getting interested in how to make our own puppets. We started researching that online, leading us to places like Puppet Nerd’s excellent YouTube page, and Adam Savage’s many videos on puppetry on his Tested YouTube page. We joined the Puppetry Guild, and we started attempting to make our own puppets. We also started watching the YouTube duo Ragmop and Goose, who make and sell cute puppets, and have a series of charming videos starting their characters. My wife gave me a 90 minute lesson with Stacy Gordon, a puppeteer from Sesame Street, which was amazing. We went to the Jim Henson Creature Shop in New York. To put it simply, we fell down the rabbit hole big time. It was like a switch was turned on.

Now I should say at this point, I’ve always been a fan of puppetry and Muppet-style puppets ever since I was a little kid, and the same goes for my wife. I grew up watching the Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock. I saw the Sesame Street Follow That Bird movie in theaters when I was a kid. I love Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. And we’ve had puppets in our house even before this, heck I still have some of the ALF puppets you got with a Kids Meal at Burger King back in the 80s, as well as puppets of the Piranha Plant from Super Mario Bros. My wife has had puppets of animals like rabbits, rats and crows.

But with those puppets, we just kinda had them. Maybe you’d throw them on and amuse yourself for a few seconds, but that was the extent of it. With these new ones, we were making them from scratch, and deciding on design factors, like what color and texture the fur would have, what shape they’d be, what features, what kind of eyes, and then giving them names, and trying to find their personalities. So far I’ve made two small hand puppets, Oswald and Cheese Puff. I’ve learned a lot making them, and I’ve tried different things between the two of them. I’m working on a third right now that will be my first ‘live hands’ puppet, where you put your hands in the puppets hand, glove style. I can’t wait to finish him!

We’ve been asked about what our ‘end goal’ is, and we don’t really have any right now. Though we thing our next step will be to set up a YouTube or Instagram or TikTok page for these guys, and maybe work on some actual performances. We’re still working on that part, and working on actually performing with these guys. But it’s been less than a year that we’ve been doing this, and we’ve already come a long way, so hopefully we’ll keep that momentum going !