We wanted to premiere it in New York, because New York is sort of the home of the Jim Henson Company and it’s sort of the tone and flavor, always, of the puppet work that we’ve done traditionally. And that’s what brought us here and now we’re here.
BRIAN HENSONI think it’s a lot richer than what we call fleshy improv, I think it’s very funny, puppet improv and fleshy improv.
More Brian Henson Quotes
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I have nothing really prepared,” and actually I say that, the show is not all improvising.
BRIAN HENSON -
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.
BRIAN HENSON -
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.
BRIAN HENSON -
I try to emulate his approach of really get the most out of people by allowing them to experiment and certainly allowing people to make mistakes.
BRIAN HENSON -
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 -
I had a plan, but then I work with an army of great artists and I want all of them to create inside that creation.”
BRIAN HENSON -
So it’s Rosemary Clooney – Rosemary? Rosemary Clooney, right? The singer? Yes. Clooney, doing, singing. “
BRIAN HENSON -
This is certainly the raunchiest, if you use that word, raunchy. The roots of Jim Henson, though, was adult comedy.
BRIAN HENSON -
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.”
BRIAN HENSON -
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.
BRIAN HENSON -
I think in a creative effort, in any creative effort, you need to, people need to be able to be taking risks and if it turns out to be a mistake, if it turns out not to have been the right choice, that should be applauded, you know, by everybody, and it will come up with another plan.
BRIAN HENSON -
My dad and mom were, they would take what were popular hits, and lip-sync to them with puppets and do a ridiculous story.
BRIAN HENSON -
And it should be something that only that group of people could’ve made with everybody invested.
BRIAN HENSON -
We try to keep it a classy show, but it certainly is blue at times. And it all depends on the audience, sometimes we’ve have audiences that don’t really want us to go too far in that direction.
BRIAN HENSON -
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.
BRIAN HENSON