🃏 ALL-CARDS is now on available via Indie Press Revolution. If you missed the Kickstarter, but wanted to check out my storytelling battle game compatible with every kind of trading card, this is your chance to pick up a copy!
You can get a copy at two brick and mortar stores I’m aware of: Whammy! in Los Angeles and Gather & Game in Buffalo, two of my favorite stores in the world! I’d love if you told your local game store to carry ALL-CARDS. They can order through IPR’s retailer catalog.
I worried my one opportunity was going to pass me by.
I’m a big fan of puppets, particularly of the Muppet variety. For over two years, I’ve been paying dues into the LA Guild of Puppetry to get their newsletter. I was told their newsletter was the best way to hear about upcoming classes in the area, but the only local class I saw listed was Ragmop and Goose’s puppet building class, which I took to create my emo son Brandon. When I replied to the Guild of Puppetry newsletter asking about the lack of classes in LA, the puppeteer on the other end was as baffled as I was about the lack of classes. This is a mystery even a green gumshoe couldn’t solve.
One day, I did a goofy double-take looking at my inbox. A beginner-friendly on-camera puppeteering class was listed on the guild newsletter! And the instructor was a bone fide Muppeteer. Greg Ballora worked on The Muppets (2011) and Muppets Tonight, and he has a Muppet Wiki page, so extremely legit. He was teaching the same class twice in one weekend. Two opportunities to drink from the Felt-ain of Wisdom.
But I already had plans both days. Ughhh! I worried this would be a Brigadoon situation and there wouldn’t be another LA puppeteering course in LA for another hundred years.
Whoopie Goldberg, who plays God in A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie*, must’ve heard my soul screaming in agony. Call it fate, magic, or a diva’s divine intervention, but all my weekend plans cancelled for non-tragic reasons, and I was able to snag a last minute spot in the class!
The workshop took place in a dance studio in Hollywood. As I arrived, three young women sitting in sweats and black leotards asked what I was doing there. I was dressed in a loose fitting Minesweeper Hawaiian shirt, which was my interpretation of “movement clothes.” When I said it was a puppeering class, they said “that sounds like fun” in the way a popular girl would pass your lunch table while you’re playing cards and say Magic: the Gathering “looks really cool.”
Though I’m not a professional puppeteer, whenever I have occasion to “work a puppet” (a phrase I now know thanks to the class), people enjoy it. Kids and adults. I was entertaining my nephew with a marionette at a toy store last year and he said, unprompted, “you’re really good at that!” And my nephew is not a flatterer. He would be the first to tell you I suck at Fortnite. So, I guess my secret fantasy of the class was that Muppeteer Greg Ballora would tell me I was a natural and say, “You know, me, Brian Henson, and Beaker are getting lunch at Canter’s next Wednesday. Swing by. Let’s talk about your future.”
That is not what happened.
I’d say there were about 20 students in the dance studio. Half the class would perform an exercise while the other half watched, then we would switch. There’s a stance a puppeteer must master for on-camera work. On a puppet shoot, the camera is placed high in the air. The puppeteer is supposed to have their arm stretched upward, behind their back, so the puppet can lock eyes with the camera. I practiced this in my row of ten students, only instead of puppets, we had rings with big puppet-like eyeballs on them. My hand was stretched upward and behind me, as I tried to maneuver my hand so the googley-eyes made direct eye contact. Every time the instructor went past me in line, he corrected my posture. My arm wasn’t tall enough. My arm wasn’t back enough. My googley-eyes weren’t straight enough. He said my arm was too stiff. I blame a lifetime spent typing in front of a computer eight hours a day. It wasn’t my fault, Muppeteer Greg Ballora!
After learning proper puppet-wielding, we were taught tricks of the trade. How to move the mouth realistically. (Use your thumb to lower the jaw, as opposed to flapping your hand open like a quacking duck.) How to make a walk convincing. (Bob the puppet up and down, side to side, proportional to their imagined height.) How to properly hold the arm rods. (This one still stumps me, and Greg didn’t give us enough time to practice IMO.) The goal is to make the puppet look and feel alive physically, so the audience has an easier time suspending their disbelief.
After a break, we were placed in front of the camera. Every student was given a random puppet. Mine was a very Muppet-y blue fuzzball. We had to make our puppet walk to center frame, pivot to the camera, walk to the camera for a close-up and say “My name is Bob.” After a bit of improvised patter with Greg, we would walk off camera the opposite way.
As a human being, I would’ve had no issues doing this. I’ve walked up to camera and said things many times! The challenge of doing this with a puppet is that while you’re going through simple motions, you’re staring at a monitor the whole time. A monitor that shows everything in reverse. The reason the image is reversed is that’s what the video will ultimately look like, so to have true control over a puppet performance in real time, you need to see the reverse image.
As a Muppet fan, I already knew the image would be in reverse. But I didn’t appreciate how difficult it would be to get used to that. First, I just tried to find my puppet on the monitor. That took some waving and wiggling my arm just to spot my fuzzball. Then I tried puppet walking, which I think I did well at technically, but the reversed image made me second guess where I needed to stop and I overshot center frame. I had to stop myself from pivoting away from camera. My walk to camera was curvy to the point that I veered off frame and had to correct fuzzball’s position.
In the improv, Greg noted to fuzzball that he was a little off. I played Bob the Fuzzball essentially as myself, remarking on how walking and talking was harder than he thought it would be. I’m sure my patter about the difficulty of puppeteering was the same joke thousands of beginner puppeteers have made, like a stand-up at an open mic telling jokes about how weird it is to talk to a bunch of strangers.
My main criticism of the class was the class size. We didn’t get a lot of individual time and attention. I wanted to try the exercise a few times to see if I could nail it and feel comfortable, but my chance was over in a few moments. I felt like I was about to get booed by Statler and Waldorf, but I was rushed off the stage too quickly for them to respond. (Fozzie, when they start talking from the balcony, just run!)
The last part of the class was my favorite. Greg’s assistant put on ridiculous pop songs, like “Party Rock Anthem” and “Baby One More Time.” We got to work the puppets in groups in front of the camera, singing and rocking out with our puppets. What a blast! When I think of The Muppet Show, I think of the brilliant musical numbers. The earliest Jim Henson routines were black and white puppet lip syncs. It was super fun to generate some of that magic with the other students. Letting loose and having fun with the practice of puppetry.
I’m a long way from getting that coveted Beaker lunch invite, but who cares? If this is the beginning of a journey, I just want to enjoy the ride, like a frog and a bear in a Studebaker on the open road.
🎲 Your Turn: Did you ever try something and were disappointed you weren’t immediately good at it? What was it? Do you have a favorite Muppet? My favorite is Gonzo and my favorite obscure Muppet is Digit from The Jim Henson Hour, who is like if Kramer from Seinfeld was a robot. (Both characters are puppeteered by the legendary Dave Goelz. Gonzo and Digit, not Gonzo and Kramer.)
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* This might be one of the most misleading movie titles ever. The Muppets are all extremely depressed in this TV special. I can tolerate a sad Muppet on screen for, like, five minutes tops.
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