Louise starred in a late night gala

[Skekayuk]

Recently on a thread, Travellingpat said of the Muppeteers "Hey these guys are famous in our eyes" Yet they don't often get recognised as such by a wider audience. But just occasionally they do actually get the recognition/role they deserve. There was one such occurrence about a week and a half ago, at a Theatrecares late night FUNdraising show. This particular show featured The Company of Mary Poppins. Apparently they didn't seem to want their leading lady Scarlett Strallen to take a lead in this special, and Broadway actor Gavin Creel wanted to be just 'one of the company'. Yet they had to have someone to act as compeer, hold the show together, so Louise Gold did the honours. Although Louise was taking part because she is an accomplished actress (and currently appearing in Mary Poppins), her starring role within their Late Night special was very much due to her being a famous puppeteer. Admittedly it was because of her having been such a major puppeteer on Spitting Image, but as she only did such a major role on Spitting Image because of having been a Muppeteer..... - Anyway the whole thing was absolutely hilarious, especially with Scarlett getting bossed around by an impertinent puppet - Oh how shades of TMS can you get! And Louise even managed to sing Sondheim (of all things) while puppeteering at the same time!

 

[travellingpat]

Louise is a great example of how some muppeteers choose to go out there and doing another career they are interested in, with Louise its Acting, With Frank its Directing...some of them really do put their names out there and become famous for something other than being with the Muppets...thats a really cool story about Louise

 

[movielad]

I think what's impresed me the most are/were people like Karen Prell and Mike Quinn who used their performance knowledge to work as animators at Pixar. I think you do need a certain performance skill in digital animation based on what I see at work, so it worked out quite well for them.

Unfortunately puppetary is being replaced by CG these days which is a bit of a shame. Some of the people I worked with came from the Jim Henson Creature Shop and ironically worked on the CG replacements for animatronic work that had been completed and deemed too unrealistic.

Oh hum.

M.

 

[Skekayuk]

with Louise its Acting, With Frank its Directing...some of them really do put their names out there and become famous for something other than being with the Muppets

But of course Louise was already an actress before she became a puppeteer (stage school kid and all that). It's just that she wasn't all that well known, but she had spent four years acting in regional theatre tours before joining The Muppets. Even during TMS's day she still acted on stage inbetween series (notable: Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at The Reading Hexagon, Squeak at The Queens Theatre Hornchurch, and, Godspell at The Thorndike TheatreLeatherhead).

Whereas, correct me if I'm wrong, but Frank's directing startedduring his time as a Muppeteer, when he co-directed several of the Muppet films.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Yeah! Frank did start directing with the Muppets. But that so cool that Miss Louise Gold was at that event!