Hi ho everyone, new MC member here!

FISH'N'WOLFE

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Bio: I got into puppeteering about four years ago purely by chance. It actually started with the purchase of the Mr. Bill Collection on DVD oddly enough. I had been a Muppet fan all my life, growing up on Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Muppet TV specials (Muppet Family Christmas, favorite Muppet film of them all!) but had never been actually interested in puppeteering itself, except for a short time at age 9 when I was severly ill with Cat Scratch Fever (yes, it is a real infection caused by bacteria transferred from a cats nails, it has nothing to do with the cat itself.) I created an alter ego of my doctor in a sock puppet and named him Doctor Demento, along with a couple of other characters. I simply needed a release of some sort to get me through that time, and it did just that along with the support of my parents and close friends. After that I moved onto other things, but even though different, they were still creative and artistic, which of course is a huge part of puppetry. I also was extremely interested in show buisiness in general and knew that I wanted to do something in the industry, but wasn't sure what. So now we arrive at my Mr. Bill purchase. I, along with my best friend Lucas, started shooting our own Mr. Bill style skits with a simple black and white security camera starring a character Wil, who we based on a real friend of mine of the same name who is excessively accident prone in real life. We would have various mishaps happen to him which we thought were hilarious, and we soon evolved into other puppet styles (Wil went from clay to Play-Doh to rag doll to string puppet to stop animation armature and finally to hand puppet, over the four year period.) and finally reached a point where we couldn't develop the character the way we wanted, we were animating him frame by frame by pausing and un-pausing the VCR in record mode with okay results. So finally one night I said to Luke, why don't we try full size hand puppets? So we did and were off to the races, making huge strides including the development of over twenty characters so far, Luke being an excellent character designer along with my character construction skills made for a perfect combination. So we learned basic puppetry, voices, and to work with monitors by setting up in my living room. We had a full homemade set jammed in a tiny apartment with a TV monitor and camera. Anyways after filming several skits we finally decided on a whim to send a demo tape to the Jim Henson Co. and see what would happen, well, lo and behold five months later I got a package containing my tape and a hand-typed letter with their logo on it, of course at this point I had almost forgotten about sending the demo. Figuring I had been rejected I opened it casually, well was I SURPRISED! This is what it said: Dear Mr. Provost, We recently recieved your demo tape regarding your interest in becoming a puppeteer with the Jim Henson Company. Kevin Clash has reviewed your tape and was very impressed by your work. Though we would like to invite you to our next workshop for an audition and training, we have no set date at present. Therefore, we will keep your details on file and contact you accordingly. In the meantime, I am returning your tape as I thought you might like it back. We know how much work goes into creating one. Thanks for your interest and keep up the great work. Sincerely, Joe Roddy (Hand signed) So I was ecstatic as you can imagine! I'm still waiting for a reply, but now with the transfer of the company back to the Henson family I am sure that it will be a while before I hear anything. But in the meantime I've been co-developing a production company with Lucas (FISH'N'WOLFE Productions) and also have worked on local theater productions as sound engineer, but am currently working as a production assistant for exit4music multimedia. (www.exit4music.com) Lucas, my mom Laurel, and I are also currently working on developing a unique puppet/human TV pilot set in New York city. We are currently stalled seeing as we have no studio space to film it in and are on a tight budget. If any of you know of CHEAP studio space in or around CT please let me know! An old grocery store or similar large space would be perfect! I will also eventually be looking for puppeteers, puppet builders, (specifically foam sculpture) costume designers, and the like, so anyone in CT and the surrounding states who is interested should email me at fishnwolfeproductions@netzero.com

Well, thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this! You guys have a great site going here. Kudos! Sincerely, Kevin Provost aka FISH'N'WOLFE
 

froggiegirl18

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Awesome story!!well minus the sickness part but it is amazing of how great things can come out of normal circumstances :smile:
 
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