The Fast Life Puppet Company

Our mission here at The Fast Life Puppet Company is to reach middle school and high school students across the country. We preform shows that depict scenarios involving drugs and alcohol. We hope to be able to reach out to young students by showing them in a new way how drugs and alcohol are dangerous and life altering. 

The puppets we use are rod puppets.

 

We set up scenarios of the rod puppets (in a car drinking and driving and being irresponsible). We set the plot up by making the show comical to the teenagers. We use their slang and normal day activities they will relate to. We slowly introduce drugs and alcohol and show the students how the outcome will be for one who denies opposed to those who didn't. Hopefully the students will remember the story they might have related to through this performance during a time they are faced with a decision to abuse drugs or alcohol. 

Our first production will be "Friday Night Fights Back". This is a series of scenes with the puppets enjoying a Friday night football game on a nice fall night. The events of the night turn south fast when the characters decide to partake in abusing drugs and alcohol to celebrate their football victory. 

I found a homemade clip of a "don't drink and drive" puppet show. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7LWyBJj1jI

(gata love the part with the pig in the car) 

Shari Lewis & Lamb Chop

In chapter 9, I of course found Shari Lewis and her sock-puppet “sidekick” Lamb Chop interesting. I slightly remember Lamb Chop from growing up. As soon as I saw her picture during the reading I remembered and said “aw Lamb Chop!” My roommate stared at me like I was nuts and asked who Lamb Chop was. I was surprised she didn't know who that was. So I looked up clips of Lamb Chop and Shari Lewis to show her. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ0hM3HMHEg

Shari Lewis began at a young age. She was taught ventriloquism from the African American puppeteer John W. Cooper.  She created characters Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, and Hush Puppy who were all a part of one of her programs called Hi Mom.  Shari was most famous for her character Lamb Chop.

Lamb Chop is a sheep with a self-confident spirit accompanied by Shari Lewis, her creator, as her ventriloquist. Lamb Chop once said during a show at the Carnegie Conference, “I am an Icon.” 

She’s also known for her interaction with Kermit the frog from Sesame Street. She appeared in Episode 3525 and was also featured in a celebrity “Alphabet Song” rendition from that season. Shari Said during an interview following Jim Henson’s death in 1990, “He raised puppeteering to an art form beyond people who just jiggle dolls. Lamb Chop and Kermit were very funny together. Kermit would get very rattled whenever she asked, 'So Kermie, how's the pig?’”

Sheri Lewis’s Lamb Chop and the others are an example on how puppets are used in educational purposes for children as well as how puppetry has made its way moving into film and television. Sheri Lewis was offered her own show by NBC called The Shari Lewis Show. The show was eventually turned into Lamb Chop’s Play-Along. This show received several Emmy Awards.

Sheri Lewis passed away in 1998. Her daughter, Mallory Lewis, became the voice of Lamb Chop after her mother’s death. She talked about media and puppetry in an interview for the Carnegie Conference in 2003.

 “Mallory Lewis, Lamb Chop's sidekick, said that for her, taking part in the video was a great opportunity to talk to others in her business because she works solo. What's more, the video was an interesting way to combine two different art forms -- media and puppetry.” 

"Art is a way of looking at things differently…"

 "It's a special way of looking at puppetry." – Mallory Lewis 

Muppets Steal Our Hearts

The Muppets are obviously a known part of American theater and entertainment. As most of us in this class, I would think the Muppets are one of the fist things that went through our minds when we thought about puppets. I know I was thinking that we would be learning about puppets just like them. My friends that I told about me taking this class thought the same thing. "You are taking a class on Kermit the frog?"

I think that the Muppets and Sesame Street are such a big and favorite part to the American culture because of the relationship most people have with them. I know these two shows have been around ever since I was little and for most that is still true. When you are young there is just something about animals that can talk and you always imagine yourself being there with them and believe that these puppets are talking straight to you. The Muppets also take us out of our world and into theirs. For that hour or how ever long the show is, we get to live in their world that is more complex and exciting in some cases than the average American.

I feel as if Americans connect more with the Muppet and Sesame street because they tend to reach out to us. Like the relationship between Kermit and Miss Piggy. There's no possible way that a frog and pig could fall in love in real life here in America. But the idea of love and the relationship they have connects to us as humans. I know I still laugh to this day when I watch them and sometimes even make connections to my own relationships and real life situations which makes the whole experience more comical to me.

Children also take a big role in the love for the Muppets and Sesame Street here in America as well. I think that once a child is watching these shows, like i did, they latch on to the characters and they begin to learn. Once they learn and grow to love these individual characters as if they were their friends, the parents then latch on as well. Everyone likes to see their children love and grow which makes the parents love and grow with them. As our generation progresses, we look back on the Muppets and Sesame Street as a connection to joy and laughter that filled our childhood in those moments when we were sucked into the shows.

High-Wire Acts Attack

When I first stated reading this chapter on High Wire Acts, I thought it was going to be about certain puppets with wire attached to them. I thought "high-wire" to be more of a breed of puppet than what I came to find out it really was. Blumenthal explains what high-wire is after talking about the double vision that theaters give to the audience.

 "While film can lock onto the imagination and virtually transport the audience, spectators at live theaters never quite forget where they are, however much they buy into the fabricate world on stage.....In puppet theater, this so called 'willing suspension of disbelief'' becomes a high-wire act as the gap between normal reality and state truth becomes a chasm."

When i started reading on something that caught my attention was Senor Wences and his "sidekick" Johnny. Johnny is a puppet made from Senor Wences' Hand.



It says he used to construct Johnny in front of the Audience at each performance.

I found a clip on you-tube of one of his performances. He was a guest on the Muppet's. From this clip i realized that he is a lot like Jeff Dunham in his performance. Its very comical and i fell in love with Johnny right away as do most people im sure of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AaIDmiFXmo


From what i understand about the term "hard-wire", what makes Johnny a hard-wire act is the amount of unavailability that Johnny is indeed a puppet. Just from looking at Johnny and knowing that he is just made up from a hand, you wouldn't imagine believing he can convince you that he is real. Senor Wences does a remarkable job creating Johnny making him become real to the audience making it a hard-wire performance.

"Face" The Breed of The "Hand" Puppet

When I started to read about the Show Breeds of puppets, the first page in chapter two caught my attention immediately. The first puppet mentioned was the Hand or "glove" puppet. There are different variations of hand puppets I learned, but the overall idea is that the puppet physically attaches to a source of life, a puppeteer.

Blumenthal explains the different areas of the body that "hand" puppets are controlled by. The typical notion is that hand puppets are controlled through the puppeteers hand. The fingers control the head and arms of the puppet. Puppet characters can also live on the fingers of the actors. Another variation of the hand puppet is the Mitten Head. This is where my brain started to create a web.

Mitted Heads come about when a manipulator's thumb animates the character's lower jaw while the other four fingers make a malleable face. This statement brought me back to my middle school days. I began to think about how I used to draw a face on my finger, using my thumb as the mouth, I would create a character I controlled with my hand. I related that memory with the information I had just read. I believe that when I drew that character on my finger, I had in a sense created a puppet.

As I read on, I came across a greater realization that really made me think about what a puppet really is and just how many classifications and breeds there are.  Blumenthal states, "puppets have lived on nearly every part of the human body. Sergei Obraztsov used his elbow for a baby's heard." (p 39) My memory took me back again to when I was younger and playing with my friends. We used to draw eyes on our chins, lay upside down, cover the rest of our faces, and used our mouths as the rest of the character's face. The picture below displays this game we used to play.



Since I realized that this variation of puppets could technically be used on any part of the body, I began to consider if this "face puppet" would indeed be considered a puppet. Or is it a mask? If this silly game we played really is a puppet, then what breed would it be classified under?

I still go back and forth as to whether this character I used to create is a mask or a puppet.