Inside Story

Puppet shows aren't just for kids, as anyone who's caught an earful of Avenue Q's adult-themed lyrics or an eyeful of Puppetry Of The Penis will testify. So don't expect Puppet Up! – Uncensored to be G-rated.

“It's naughty!” laughs Brian Henson, co-creator and producer of the show (and son of the late Jim Henson, who created Sesame Street and The Muppet Show). “The Jim Henson Company has a naughty, irreverent sensibility that really started with my dad. We love the absurdity of life and how we treat one another; we love pointing it out and laughing at it.”

Puppet Up! – Uncensored isn't all that smutty. And if it does occasionally get a few shades of blue, well, you only have yourselves to blame. The show, you see, is mostly improvised, with the antics of 60 or so puppets (brought to life by a team of six puppeteers) inspired by suggestions from the audience. “They can get carried away and throw a few very adult curveballs and suggestions in there, which we take. Most of the show is improvised, with a few set pieces re-enacting my dad's earliest puppetry from a late-night TV show in Washington DC back in the 1950s, which audiences seem to really love. Before he made Sesame Street, which made people think he was a children's entertainer, he made adult entertainment. I don't necessarily mean racy, but he liked doing things that required the audience to think. One thing I love about Puppet Up! is that it reminds me of when I would visit my dad's sets as a kid and watch him and all the guys he worked with develop these characters, and what they would do when the camera wasn't rolling was really blue, really adult. That's how they found the way each character was funny. By ad-libbing or improvising that way, they would develop their characters from an adult sensibility and then clean them up. Puppet Up! presents the stuff that was underneath.”

Last in Australia in 2007, when the show was in its very early stages, the funny, fast-paced array of ad-libbed comedy sketches and musical numbers have evolved to include digital puppetry, the actions of animated characters created in real-time before the audience. “The audience not only gets to enjoy the show but they also get to see how the show is done.”

What really drives the show however is the creative philosophy of The Jim Henson Company, which delves deep into recognisable and relatable human emotions in shaping its characters and their points of view. “It's interesting, people think we're a wholesome family-entertainment kind of company but if you look at what we do you'll find it's rarely about the nuclear-family unit. It was part of my dad's philosophy that what brings the world together is when people start to appreciate one another for their differences rather than their similarities, and how wonderful it is when people who are radically different come together.”