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.
BRIAN HENSONIt’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.
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.
BRIAN HENSONI have nothing really prepared,” and actually I say that, the show is not all improvising.
BRIAN HENSONBut 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.
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.
BRIAN HENSONYou get used to it, you look forward to the adrenaline of the stage fright before you go out.
BRIAN HENSONAnd it should be something that only that group of people could’ve made with everybody invested.
BRIAN HENSONWe 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 HENSONWhere 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.
BRIAN HENSONSo 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.
BRIAN HENSONWe 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 HENSONPeople would say to him, “When you finish a movie, did it come out as good as you thought it was going to?” Or, “Did it come out the way you intended it to come out?”
BRIAN HENSONhe puppeteers really responded to it. Patrick Bistrow really responded to it, it’s great fun to do improve comedy with puppets.
BRIAN HENSONAnd 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.
BRIAN HENSONMy dad and mom were, they would take what were popular hits, and lip-sync to them with puppets and do a ridiculous story.
BRIAN HENSONThere’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