Dan Becker: It really is fascinating with all these puppets, from Kermit to Elmo to everything in between, as it gets passed from one puppeteer to the next, how the personality really evolves significantly, and really begins to take on parts of the puppeteer's personality and stuff. It's incredible the history and the generations of the famous puppets out there.
Brian Meehl: This might be my own bias, but I think the most successful puppets, were the ones that were passed on to another puppeteer, and they were allowed a wide range of changing the character. And they could make the character their own and make it better. And some of the characters, literally the puppeteers were instructed "No, you have to do it like so-and-so did it". It's like trying to do Oliver's Hamlet. You gotta do your own Hamlet. So I really appreciated and loved working with the producers and directors that understood that when you passed on a puppet to someone else, they had to put their own imprint on it.
Nate Begle: There's always a fine line between, especially if it's a long standing character who's been around for years and years, there's always what they call character integrity. The character exists and it has existed for this long, so there's these certain bullet points that you do have to hit. But then when a new performer takes it over, you have add your own flair, because you're never really gonna be able to do a carbon copy of somebody else's, like no one will be able to do Jim's Kermit. Kermit has very specific personality points that you have to hit, and then you go from there. But I think it's always important to let the performer take on and put a new spin on it.
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