Audition Tapes

[Buck-Beaver]

Some puppeteers strictly adhere to the a,e,i,o,u "thing" (enunciating each vowel sound the puppet says) others don't. It's a really tricky thing to learn to do.

Interestingly, one former Muppet puppeteer I took a workshop with told us that when he was trained by Richard Hunt Richard would tell them to perform one way, but then do it totally differently on the set. This drove some of the rookie puppeteers mad beause if they tried to copy Richard's technique on the set their work got criticized while no one said anything to Richard.

So I guess there's a bit of "know the rules before you break the rules" going on. Once you can do anything with a puppet, then you're much better equipped to make decisions about how to do things.

I think Jim Henson's work with Kermit and the old Bert and Ernie stuff from the mid-70s on is so humbling to watch from a technical point of view. It's just so smooth and fluid. You can practice for ten years and not have that kind of subtlety in your work.