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 HENSONAnd with puppets, especially in our company, we sort of demand a very high standard of puppetry, so it’s a real technical skill.
More Brian Henson Quotes
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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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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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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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And that was always my father’s favorite part about shooting as well. Often my dad would shoot very, very late, he was quite a workaholic, they would do 20, 20-hour shoots and stuff like that.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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 it should be something that only that group of people could’ve made with everybody invested.
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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 with puppets, especially in our company, we sort of demand a very high standard of puppetry, so it’s a real technical skill.
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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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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’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