Puppets

Sorry about the mush-fest that was yesterday’s post, I was feeling pensive.

 I’ve loved puppets since as early as I can remember. Watching “The Muppet Show” with my parents is the earliest memory I have, and the fact that we did it together, as a family, just reinforced my love of puppets. Now, you would think that it would be of “Sesame Street” or “Mr. Rogers”, whose puppet-based learning programs were built for children, but alas, it was the prime-time show that I remember the most. And I guarantee it was the universal appeal of adult humor with child-friendly puppets that drew my family to watch it.

 So, during my childhood (you did read yesterday’s post where I talked about my stage-fright, right?) I would make puppets and put on puppet shows for my very large extended family. I could accomplish my desire to perform for one reason, and no, it wasn’t because it was in front of my family… I was behind the stage, hidden from view. Yes, my many voices would be made known as I talked with my hands to bring life to these puppets, but my face was always hidden from view, and my eyes never made contact with the audience. Even today, I’ve found the only way I can perform is to blur my vision and look over people’s heads in the audience. As a wise director once told me, “While you are up on stage, I don’t want you to look at people, just look in their direction, which, if you’ll notice, there are three doors behind them. I want you to look at the exit to the right, the center exit, and the left exit.”

 Last year, having just lost my job right before Christmas, I decided to make presents for most of my nieces and nephews and a couple second cousins whom I consider nieces. And for them, I decided to make puppets. It actually all started while we were rewatching “The Muppet Show”, and in a couple episodes the guest star received a Muppet-likeness of themselves at the end. A friend of ours said she wanted a Muppet-likeness of herself, so I thought that I’d make her one, and had so much fun, I made puppets for the kids. I didn’t make any for our nephews in California, as I thought they would be too old for puppets, and, well, we’re bad uncles.

Now, I had given away all the puppets I had made, and felt sad… I didn’t have any for me! And so I did a little research on making more intricate puppets, ones with poseable fingers and hidden slots in their wrists for arm rods to be attached. And so I began work on my puppets, and I think I got a little carried away because it is, well, big. But, I made it for me, and it fits my arm length perfectly. I’m still thinking about attaching hips and legs to it, maybe with Velcro so they can be removed when I don’t want to use it as a full-body puppet. But then decided to make a smaller puppet for me like the ones I made for the kiddos.

 

And so here I sit, writing this blog entry about puppets, and wishing my sewing machine wasn’t broken because I really want to make some more. But alas, my craft room looks like a big pile of foam, fleece and feather boas, as if a nuclear holocaust attacked the set of “The Muppet Show.”