Maggie Interviews Brian Henson

KTWV-FM / 94.7 The WAVE

2 days ago

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00:00I'm Maggie McKay from 94.7 The Wave, and today I'm so excited because we are joined by the

00:05legendary puppeteer and award-winning director Brian Henson, and he has a lot of other titles

00:11and awards, but we don't have that kind of time. However, we're so happy to have you here today,

00:16Brian. It's great to be here. Thank you. So tell us about this new unconventional puppet show

00:23called Puppet Up Uncensored, coming to the Kirk Douglas. Yes, yes, coming to the Kirk Douglas in

00:30the second half of July. This is a show, it's for the puppeteers in our company, we call it,

00:36it's the scariest thing that we do it. It's also the most rewarding. It's about half improv and half

00:44set pieces. It's almost like a sketch comedy show, but with puppets. It's really funny,

00:50and you say it's brand new. It's actually an evolving show that I've been doing with Patrick

00:57Bristow, who created the show with me, and Patrick and I got together and created the show probably in

01:022007 initially, and it's been evolving and evolving and evolving over the years. It's really a great show

01:10now. It's kind of a perfect show for right now, because as is any improv, but then you do it with

01:22puppets, it's even funnier. It's making light of the human experience in a really, really hysterical

01:30way, which I think is really, we all need a chance to just laugh and let loose in these days. And it's a

01:39show that will do that for you. Right. And why do you have to be at least 16 to attend?

01:45Oh, because it's half improvised. And that's pretty much true of any improvising show. The audience

01:52wants to lead you in directions, and then it's kind of funny, because the audience will give you a

01:59suggestion for a moment in a scene that you have to take, and then you try to do a classy,

02:04treat it in a sort of classy way, but it definitely is R-rated when that happens.

02:13So we could do the show for a whole audience, and it wouldn't be as funny as it is for the adults

02:20as it is right now. And it's sort of a naughty puppet show, and it's a chance for adults

02:29to kind of laugh like kids and get a little naughty.

02:37Were you at Groundlings and the light bulb went off? Is that right? Were you at a show?

02:43Kind of. Well, it was kind of like that. So going all the way back, when my girlfriend at the time,

02:49who's now my wife, Mia Sarah, and she's obviously a very accomplished actress. So when we first got

02:55together, I was telling her about training puppeteers, because I used to train all the

02:59puppeteers for my dad in England, and my mother and Kevin Clash would train all the puppeteers,

03:05and Richard Hunt here in America. And we would say that we would train 20 puppeteers, and we'd get

03:11maybe one that had the ability to ad-lib, because my dad loved to ad-lib, and like he and Frank Oz,

03:20and Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, all those original Dave Goels, those original guys were excellent at

03:25ad-libbing. So I'm telling this to Mia, and she said, and I said, gosh, we have trained so many

03:32puppeteers, and we're just hoping for those few who can be good puppeteers, but also be able to ad-lib.

03:38And she said, that's called improv, and you can train it. It's called improv comedy.

03:44And I, so yeah, she took me to a Groundlings show, and afterwards I went, wow, those people

03:52really do know how to ad-lib. That's some real good ad-libbing. I believe my dad never saw an

03:58improv comedy show, and I think if he had, he would have embraced it the same way I did. So ever since,

04:04so then Mia introduced me to Patrick Bristow, who's a renowned improviser and improv director and

04:10instructor. So Patrick came, and we talked it over, and he said, sure, I'll try to train your guys in

04:19improvising with puppets. He says, it's going to be hard, because improvisers always watch each other's

04:23eyes to try to anticipate what they're going to do. And he said, can you work the puppets and watch

04:30each other's eyes? And I said, no, no, no. Our whole technique is we hold the puppet up, and we're

04:34watching a monitor that shows us what the puppet's doing. And so initially, he thought it wasn't going to

04:39work, but he was game for giving it a go. And it turned out to work really well. It turns out that

04:44puppeteers, weirdly, you can watch a monitor, and you can watch the other person's puppet, and you

04:49can kind of read their mind, just like you can with improvisers. So now this is the way we train

04:57puppeteers in our company. We train them in improv and puppetry simultaneously. We try to get them to

05:02company level so that they could perform and puppet up. And the rest is sort of history. We didn't even

05:11intend to create a live show, because we're a camera-only company. And so we just decided to do

05:18a little showcase when we were doing workshops to show people what we were doing, mostly in the

05:23company, what we were doing, and how we sort of found a whole new tone of comedy that was much

05:29sharper and funnier. And then there happened to be a producer there from the Edinburgh Fringe,

05:35sorry, from Aspen Comedy Festival asked us to go there. We did. Then we were invited to Edinburgh.

05:42So then Patrick and I realized we had a show. So we don't perform year-round. We do little bouts

05:49every now and then. And so we're going to do 14 shows at the Kirk Douglas. We've got really good

05:55broadcasts here in LA. And there'll be different people on different nights. It's one of those

06:00shows that many people come back and see it over and over, because it's always a little different.

06:04Right. That's so fun. I love Groundlings. And I love your puppets. So what a marriage that is.

06:11Speaking of your dad, what do you think he would think of this show?

06:15Oh, he would love it. Yeah. He would love it. He, like I said, he loved improvising. And he also

06:20loved going blue when the cameras weren't rolling and it was just them playing around. And in fact,

06:27when they developed their characters, all those original guys, they would allow themselves to go

06:33quite adult as they were developing the characters and developing their relationships and stuff like

06:38that. And so as a kid, I remember watching and just laughing hysterically when they got dirty and

06:47naughty. And, and this whole show is, is, is that, is that all the way through the show? I think my dad

06:55would have loved it. And I think he would have done exactly like me and embraced improv comedy as a

07:00training tool for our performers. Is there a kid's version of this show? Oh, we have done,

07:07we have done. Then we just call it Puppet Up Censored. But, but honestly, we, honestly,

07:13we haven't done it, we haven't done it often. And yeah, we haven't done it often. We did it in

07:20Edinburgh because they would ask us to do a daytime show and then an evening show. And, but it's odd

07:26because then people bring their Sesame Street fan kids. So now you're trying to improvise for three

07:31and four year olds. That really gets hard. So when you ask for it, can we have a suggestion in the

07:35audience for where this date is happening? Cheese, cheese. Okay. Cheese. It gets, it gets a little

07:45weird when you're, when you're, when you're doing it for, for kids. That would be a challenge for sure.

07:51What if you get an audience, does it ever happen? That's just kind of, you know, bump on a log and

07:56they don't have very many suggestions. Do you have any backup topics? Like, do you ever throw it out?

08:02Maybe, you know, if sometimes I've been at Groundlings and it takes a while for the audience

08:07to get more. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do in that case? Well, honestly, those are sometimes some of

08:13our best shows when we have to turn the audience, when we have to wake them up, those are oftentimes

08:18the really, really good shows. Cause it's, it's really fun to read the room and feel as they're

08:24getting into it. And honestly, a really bad suggestion can often be a really, really great scene

08:30because it forces us to make it more entertaining than one would think it's going to be.

08:37No, actually, I, it's, it's interesting. We've played for audiences, you know, on and off over

08:44the years, all around the world and all across America. And, you know, once they get into it,

08:50they're, they're well into it, but no, we never, we will never plant suggestions. We just do it.

08:56That's good. It's our rules. It's our rules. And we try to tell our performers, look, if

09:02you did something really funny last night and you think you can do exactly the same thing

09:05tonight, don't you dare do it. Cause it's just not going to be fresh. It's not going to be

09:10fresh. That's gotta be, you have to be really talented to, you know, do that improv and puppeteering

09:18at the same time. That's got to take like crazy coordination. It's, it's, um, yeah, it's really

09:25challenging. It's kind of terrifying in a good way, but we learned to embrace our, our stage fright.

09:32But honestly, as, as, um, an improvised improv instructor would tell you often do, they tell

09:38you to do space work to when you're on stage, pretend you're washing the dishes and while during

09:43this scene and really make sure you keep washing the dishes, you keep putting a dish under the,

09:47the, you know, it's all miming, you know, put it under the pretend faucet, make sure you're washing

09:52it and make sure you put it on the drying rack. Oh, you didn't dry it completely dry it the rest of

09:55the way, you know, and, and they'll say, if you do space work, it's going to engage half of your

10:02brain. It's going to engage the technical side of your brain, which is going to liberate the improv,

10:07improv, improvising creative part of the brain. So in some ways, our improv is very, very fast.

10:14And I've had some really accomplished improvisers watch the show and they say their, their theory.

10:22And I think there's something to it is that because our technical brain is so engaged in

10:28actually manipulating the puppet that it completely, um, unleashes the creative side. I, I'm often in a

10:36scene where my character says something that I didn't expect it to say. And when your own puppet

10:41says something that you don't expect it to say, you know, you know, you've really opened up some

10:47connection in your brain. My gosh, what are you most proud of about this show, Brian? Um,

10:54I just always love when you can give the audience

11:05an experience that they'll really, really remember. And, and what I do love and a feeling

11:13that they'll really, really remember. I think most of all, what I get is people coming up to me

11:19afterwards and just saying, that is something I've needed for the last two years of my life.

11:24You know, I, I needed that two hours and thank you very much. And, and that's, that's wonderful

11:31when they say that. I think the other thing that I love and I'm very proud about with the show is

11:37people don't really know how we as handsome puppeteers work. Um, they, they've seen it on TV,

11:44but there is something crazy about trying to do puppets and what you're, what you're physically

11:49doing underneath the camera is really tough and ridiculous. And you're all over each other.

11:56You know, you're trying, you're like pressed up against the other puppeteers trying to get your

12:00puppets to do stuff. And, and it's really, uh, inspiring and hilarious to watch puppeteers work.

12:08So because our company is a, is a camera company, we set a camera center stage. It's, it's two shows

12:15in one is what I say. So there's giant screens above the stage that shows you what the camera

12:21is seeing. So you can watch that and you can see the puppet show, or you can watch center stage

12:27and you can watch what the puppeteers have to do to pull it off. And, and it's really fun for me to

12:32just showcase how our art form works specifically within the Jim Henson, specifically it's puppetry

12:39within the Jim Henson company, how that art form works, how we do it. Uh, it's like pulling back

12:44the curtain and, and that's also just a really fun thing to be able to do. I love that so much.

12:51Anything else you want people to know about this show? Um, come see it. There's also a VIP experience.

12:58If you want to pay for the expensive ticket, there's a VIP experience where you can come

13:02an hour early and you can meet some of the performers who are about to be on stage. We've

13:08got a bunch of characters from Labyrinth and Dark Crystal on display that you can get photos

13:13with. Um, I'm going to do a sort of Q and A and stuff. So there's also a VIP experience if people

13:19want to plus up their ticket and have a really unforgettable night. Yeah. It sounds like a good date

13:24night, right? It is an excellent debate night. We just have to, before I let you go, we just have

13:30to talk about Miss Piggy. Um, was she modeled after Peggy Lee? Is that the right story?

13:38You know, if you ask my dad, none of the characters were ever modeled on anyone. And they were always,

13:47they might've been inspired by, um, um, I, um, Oh, come on. Hot lip school of hand on mash. I think

13:59there's a little bit of her and Peggy too. That's why there's a lot of stories who she's modeled

14:05after, but maybe. Well, but the truth is I made that and Frank, all those guys, they tried not to

14:10model after anybody. You know, the Muppets came up at a time where impersonation was a big, big deal,

14:16you know, comedians would do standup shows that were just in impersonations. And, um, so my dad

14:24really was trying not to do that. And he was trying to do characters that were sort of universally

14:28relatable, no matter where you live, no matter what culture you were in. And so they would just sort

14:33of, as far as I know, none of them were really based on anything. It's most of the audience that

14:41has decided who the different characters are based on.

14:46Don't you love that? Well, this has been so fun. I can't wait to see the show. It sounds like a hoot.

14:51Um, and it's going to be at the Kirk Douglas theater from July 17th through the 27th. And if you want to

14:58get tickets, you can go to centertheatergroup.org. Thank you so much, Brian.

15:03Oh, it's my pleasure, Maggie. Thanks for having me.

Maggie Interviews Brian Henson

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