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 HENSONWe 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.
More Brian Henson Quotes
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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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In the show, we have recreated two sketches that my dad had, or pieces that my dad had developed. One that he had developed with my mother, one that Frank Oz had developed with my dad. And these are old pieces from the ’50’s and ’60’s, and we’re going to develop more, too.
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I think it’s a lot richer than what we call fleshy improv, I think it’s very funny, puppet improv and fleshy improv.
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You get used to it, you look forward to the adrenaline of the stage fright before you go out.
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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.
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Where does a character come from? Because a character, at the end of the day, a character will be the combination of the writing of the character, the voicing of the character, the personality of the character, and what the character looks like.
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And it should be something that only that group of people could’ve made with everybody invested.
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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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But curriculum-wise, I was drawn to the sciences and specifically to physics, and I really enjoyed it and I think for a little while there, I was really thinking my schooling would be in physics, that that was something I loved.
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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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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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My dad and mom were, they would take what were popular hits, and lip-sync to them with puppets and do a ridiculous story.
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Oh, well, I can’t tell you; it would be telling you the end. It’s a one-character lip-syncing because in the early days, that’s what my dad was doing.
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And if the audience is in a kind of naughty, raunchy mood, then they’re going to make naughty, raunchy suggestions and then we take them and we do the scene anyway, and that’s part of the fun.
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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.
BRIAN HENSON