Left-handed Muppeteers

[kenobikenobi]

hey. this is just a quick question. the newspaper in my area did an article on left handers and lists both jim henson and kermit as being left handed...i always thought that if the puppet was "left handed" then the puppeteer was right handed, due to the fact that they control the puppets face with their dominant hand and the hand of the puppet with the other hand...anyway, so what's the deal?

 

[janicegroupie]

I've had the same confusion too because I've read in various sources that Jim Henson was left handed but yet I was under the same impression as you about the puppetry. Plus I thought Louise Gold was the only left handed puppeteer during the Muppet Show years but I could be wrong.

 

[Xela]

Louise Gold was left-handed, and all her puppets were right-handed. But I don't know if Jim Henson was...because I've read a lot of things saying he was...but I always saw him using his right hand...

I'm confused!

 

[Was Once Ernie]

I don't know if Jim wrote left-handed, but he definitely puppeteered right-handed. That does basically make all the puppets left-handed... that is, until the puppeteers became proficient at working two rods with one hand. And technically, the puppets with working hands are right-hand dominant because the second puppeteer working the right arm tends to handle the props (although there's no rule about that).

Just for the record, I write left-handed and puppeteer right-handed.

 

[muppetsforever]

i remember seeing a piece of video of Jim signing an autograph and he did it with his right hand

 

[Labyrinth Fairy]

hey! I am left handed^^

 

[Skekayuk]

I've heard/read the rumours about Jim Henson too. I think he wasn't (since not only is their film footage of him puppeteering right-handed, but there is also footage of him signing autographs right-handed), but Kermit of course was left-handed, precisely because Jim puppeteered right-handed. The confusion has probably arison because of Kermit The Frog, like most major Muppet characters) being Left-handed.
From watching TMS, it seems pretty clear that Louise Gold is the only one of the TMS puppeteers who puppeteers left-handed (and she definitely wries left-handed as well). And In the Tibby's Bowl interview (which was published on Muppet Central) with Louise Gold, she specifically mentions the problem on TMS of her puppeteering left-handed, when no one else did.
It is possible that other TMS puppeteers may have write left-handed (I recall reading a rumour on one of the Muppet forums that Dave Goelz does - the fact that he started as a puppet-builder is some grounds for thinking that could be the case), but Louise is the only one of the major muppeteers to puppeteer left-handed in general.
That said, for a time Jerry Nelson tried puppeteering left-handed (owing to an injury to his right shoulder), but evidently didn't like it because he switched back to his right as soon as he could).

Louise Gold and Mike Quinn are the only puppeteers I have heard about who puppeteer left-handed because they write that way. There are however some puppeteers, such as Richard Coombes who started as puppet-builders and they have a tendency to puppeteer with their oppsite hand to their writing hand.

As far as I know the instances of left-handedness amongst the muppeteers is as follows:

Terry Angus - writes right-handed, but puppeteers left-handed (he may have started as a puppet-builder)
Richard Commbes - writes right-handed, but puppeteers left-handed (because he may started as a puppet-builder)
Louise Gold - writes and puppeteers left-handed
Dave Goelz - puppeteers right-handed not sure about writing
Jerry Nelson - normally writes and puppeteers right-handed (but used his left for a while in the early-mid 1970s due to an injury)
Marty Robinson - writes right-handed, but puppeteers left-handed (?did he start as a puppet builder?)
Mike Quinn (the "geriatric penguin") - writes and puppeteers left-handed

Hope that helps
Emma

 

[kenobikenobi]

thanks alot for your replies. given the evidence, i'm gonna guess that my newspaper/almost every site on the web where i looked it up, is mistaken, and that henson is actually right handed...it's kind of funny because the paper attempted to describe the whole puppeteering process behind it too...but it didn't quite add up from what i've heard previously about puppetry...

 

[Xela]

I'm left-handed...and I do lots of stuff with my left hand, but I can do it with my right hand too...just not naturally. Like, I gotta think about it, because I'll always use my left hand automatically.

I like how people come up to me and think I'm strange and ask me to write something.