Great Puppets, Bad Show

[Muppetfreak]

I thought I would start a little chat about this. Have you ever seen, or been in, a production with excellent puppetry, but that was just perfectly aweful?

Here is my story: In college, they announced a play with puppetry elements. I volunteered as a puppet builder and puppeteer. I ended up playing a shadow puppet baby fawn who had her own little starring scene, a puppet essentially made out of a lightning gel that we projected using a transparency projecter and a baby lion cub that was an actual physical puppet. I was on stage for the Lion cub bit and had to interact with a small child as the puppet who was a bit annoying. The puppets were visually amazin, BUT....

This aforementioned play was Shakuntala, an ancient sanscrit Indian play. That is all well and good and while the customs and puppets were gorgeous, the plot read like it had been hacked together by monkeys. They tried to splice like 7 different translations together and combine characters and the result made no sense at all.

Even worse, i went to school in the middle of central pennsylvania, so the entire cast was white except for this one random Indian girl we found who couldn't speak english (which was a problem because the play was in english).

It was a travesty.

Hill

 

[ravagefrackle]

yes i have

One called "KERMITS SWAMP YEARS"

and another called "ANIMAL JAM"

 

[Buck-Beaver]

LOL, I was just thinking "Animal Jam". There's a lot of post-1990 Henson stuff that falls in to this category come to think of it.

Myself, I worked on a pilot for a series that I probably shouldn't name that was one of these. Amazing cast, great looking puppets and a great set but the writing was horrendous. The producers were really inexperienced (but thought they weren't) and knew very little about writing children's television (but thought they did) and it was...half decent. But it could have been great.

 

[ravagefrackle]

lol, yeah i think we have all done those kinds of shows, i did a video for the Armed forces here in the states(i wont say what branch)any how same deal, they really didnt know what to expect despite my telling them the right and wrong way to go about it,

and as for the more proffesianl thing i believ those piles of @#%$ are often the result of all the suits trying to get involved and be "CREATIVE" and then totally deluiting good ideas with thier own bad ones,

as for Animal jam, well that was always a BAd idea, puppets are not what i consider Ideal For a exercise show, since you really only see them from the waste up, while the puppets were well done, the designs i think were terrible

swamp years was just a good concept but poorly written, and because it was doen on the cheap a lot of great opportunnities were lost, (like making the show look like it was done in the late fifties/early sixties, and getting all the anacroyistic content out of thier, hiring some good actors might have helped as well.

,

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Have you ever seen, or been in, a production with excellent puppetry, but that was just perfectly aweful?

Sure have: Me, and my life!

Actually, we were doing a Christmas Cantata many years ago (15) and one of the girls that got kicked off the puppet team at church because of something she did away from church was asked to help with background characters. Well, she was on the top back level of the stage (built from PVC pipes and curtains) and she began slamming her puppet into the stage until after a bit it just fell, the second level hit me in the head.

I think I broke that pipe with my head, too! (not really).

Anyways, prior to the stage falling I, and a girl named Christie, were performing the two main characters in the puppet gang, and we were trying to perform AND hold the stage up at the same time, and I finally just said, "Let it go. Let it fall."

Needless to say, that mean girl never EVER got back behind that puppet stage again...or behind me with a PVC pipe!

 

[Buck-Beaver]

and as for the more proffesianl thing i believ those piles of @#%$ are often the result of all the suits trying to get involved and be "CREATIVE" and then totally deluiting good ideas with thier own bad ones.

Studio/network executives/pinheads have never met a good script they couldn't ruin.

 

[ravagefrackle]

Studio/network executives/pinheads have never met a good script they couldn't ruin.

TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN

any way i worked as a intern way back when at the Swedish Cottage Marionette theate, and it was a total nightmare,

we did a traveling show for the 5 borrughs, and it was pretty much the worst organized thing i have ever done, poorly designed and built stage , made out of alluminum slide rail, that was too heavy , and way to tall for a bridge, it almost came tumbling donw with us on it, i finnished a show with one hand holding the back rail up, and the puppet in my other, after that i gave them a ultimatam, and we neevr did the show like that again,

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Oh you worked for the Swedish Cottage? I have always been curious about their shows. They're the ones with the theatre in Central Park, right?

 

[ravagefrackle]

yeah , that was my firt s real "PRO" job, lol

it soke, they have gotten much better since then, puppets are done by this guy named Addis, and NIck Coppala does thier costumes, havnet been up thier in years though,

 

[Muppetfreak]

two words to best descripe swamp years: half baked

(not in a drug reference way, in a good idea gone wrong way)