Puppet Nightmares!

Comment by Westpuppets on April 25, 2008 at 11:29pm

I have a show where some jelly beans fall on a puppets head as part of the show. The kids mobbed the stage, knocked over the CD player and pulled down the play board. ARG! I have tried to use fake candy but the kids try to eat it anyways.

Comment by biblebetty on April 29, 2008 at 11:33pm

One time durning a show I got a mouth cramp (er hand cramp) and had to leave the stage fast poor St Bernard was all alone to keep the show going

Comment by Michelle on May 4, 2008 at 12:37pm

How fun to have a group to tell your most nightmarish occurances to!

Here's one of my "favorites"! I was performing our show The Last Dragon where I wear a full body puppet of a night on horseback and I jump off the stage and into the audience with great ohhs and ahhs and applause usually from the audience. On this fateful day I jumped into the audience and everyone was laughing as I splashed through a puddle on the cafeteria floor only too late to realize it had been made by a kindergartener's bladder a few minutes before my big entrance! I can laugh at it now...but at the time.....

Comment by Westpuppets on May 4, 2008 at 9:27pm

Wow, that frightening and embarrasing. Glad you did not slip! Was it a scary show, or just too much koolaid?

Comment by Michelle on May 6, 2008 at 2:38pm

It was a bit scary...so I can claim to have scared the piss out of someone...literally!

Comment by dragontheater on May 15, 2008 at 6:50pm

This is typical of festival crowds, rare at schools. That is how decided to build my shows with the play board at least 5 feet off the ground! I used to do shows with a kid fence in front. Now the "Magic" line works OK.

As for my own puppet disaster: I was performing piece of "Peter and the wolf" for a tribute to a puppeteer friend of mine who had died. His show was performed in a puppet booth I had built for the library, so me an the cast got back together to play part of the show. The guy's puppets were not at all professional and I had since learned how to make better puppets. I had grown a bit of an ego over it, however the spirit of my deceased friend would get the last laugh. At the end the backdrop fell down and the entire booth then collapsed leaving the exposed puppeteers. We couldn't do anything else but bough. The moral of the story is: Even professional puppeteers screw up and you don't have to be a professional with fancy puppets to do a good show. Keep your ego in check!

Comment by dragontheater on May 15, 2008 at 6:55pm

Another time I was performing the hand to a full size old man puppet for Tears Of Joy's Tell tale heart. During practice me and the 2 other guys were wearing the black bags on our heads on a black stage in almost complete darkness. The stage hand asked if I needed any glow in the dark tape and I replied "no, I can see perfectly" The next scene I promptly fell off the stage. We went ahead and added the glow tape.

Comment by Freggie Productions on May 16, 2008 at 10:50am

I like the fact that Michelle can claim she scared the piss out of someone. Funny.

The video above. I need to ask... What are the parents doing as their children rush the stage?

Another question is, Why do some kids feel they need to punch puppets? I was doing a walk around performance at a local night out event and some of the kids would punch or even pull the puppet's hair. While their parents looked on! After awhile I just started avoiding these kids like the plague. I don't get it. I would never have done that as a kid.

Comment by Westpuppets on May 22, 2008 at 5:21pm

I had to make my marionette joints pull proof. To many times that reach out so fast and jerk them apart before you can stop them. During a backstage tour no matter how much you say 'look but not touch' they immediatly start touching. Has anyone electrified a puppet? Ha-ha!

Comment by Westpuppets on June 26, 2008 at 9:45pm

The video belongs to a science teacher that does pup shows for his school. He is a glutton for punishment! Ha! What did you when the head fell off? (besides stop the show)

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