And with puppets, especially in our company, we sort of demand a very high standard of puppetry, so it's a real technical skill.

Brian Henson

Categorized in : Real Skills High Standards

We took a show to the Aspen Comedy Festival, called "Puppet Up" at that point, and in Aspen we just did three shows, and in Aspen, there was a producer from the Edinborough Fringe Festival, who said, "Please come to Edinborough."

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There was a producer from the Aspen Comedy Festival who happened to be there, as a friend of a friend, and she said, "I'd like to book you into the Aspen Comedy Festival," and we said, "Well, there isn't really a show to book in, this is just a little showcase and it's really our workshop." And she said, "No, it's great, I love it, just do exactly what you did."

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I thought, well, if we're inviting an audience, let's do it right. So I put in a proper studio audience at our studios in Los Angeles and it was just a little showcase and it was just for fun.

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Patrick thought we should try to put an audience in front of one of the workshops, basically in front of the class and see how the performers rose to having an audience there, because he said, "You know, it's a really interesting test, because sometimes it gets even funnier."

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he puppeteers really responded to it. Patrick Bistrow really responded to it, it's great fun to do improve comedy with puppets.

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We kind of lost a lot of that and puppeteers were sticking to the script and we thought everything needed to get a lot funnier, so we thought we would go to a good improv comedy instructor.

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The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.

challenges mind attention

So while you're trying to improvise, you're also trying to puppeteer, you're doing everything that you need to do to perform a puppet in our style, for a camera.

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There's an awful lot of scenes where we don't know what the scene's going to be about, we ask the audience, pick a place that the scene is happening, pick the relationship, tell us who they are, things like that.

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"Sesame Street" was really the first kid's show that my dad did. He did a couple of TV specials that were targeted for kids before "Sesame Street," but really, it was, it's kind of going back to our roots, when we start to get adult. This show gets very adult sometimes, and that's because of the audience.

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It was actually what my dad did and with the Muppets, the years with the Muppets, it was really all targeted to adults. It was in a time when everything had to be safe for the whole family. But he was targeting adults.

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The first show that my dad and my mom did together was for, was a comedy series, a short form that went in the middle of late-night news, and then through all of their career, it was always the "Ed Sullivan Show," it was a variety act, my dad was on the "Jimmy Dean Show" for a few years.

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This is certainly the raunchiest, if you use that word, raunchy. The roots of Jim Henson, though, was adult comedy.

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You get used to it, you look forward to the adrenaline of the sta... by Brian Henson

You get used to it, you look forward to the adrenaline of the stage fright before you go out.

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But the fact that most of the show you can't be prepared for, you have no idea really what's coming is initially very nerve wracking, by now, it's kind of fun.

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The show is probably 60 percent improvising and 40 percent not. So there's quite a bit of it that we do have prepared and that part of it, you have memorized and you've rehearsed and you're prepared, just like any show.

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I think initially it's terrifying because going into a show where, you know, "Oh, I'm going to be on stage for two hours, I have no lines to memorize, I have nothing really prepared," and actually I say that, the show is not all improvising.

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It's actually good when the performers are nervous, because it kind of sharpens up your brain and a little bit of adrenaline is good. Initially it's really tough.

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I'd say that that is a challenge, but it also is, again, it's helpful. It's helpful to have the discipline of, okay, I'm doing, I'm doing something that's quite precise over here, working the puppet, and I'm doing something that's very imprecise and creative and unleashed over here, which is the comedy side. And it's kind of nice to allow your brain to be doing those two things at once.

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So that's the challenge, you have a big technical aspect of what you're doing whilst you're creatively trying to improvise.

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