Hey all,
Just to report: I attended the PofA Festival and was most gratified to have the opportunity to talk with Telly and Snuffalupagus puppeteer Martin Robinson. I was lucky enough to converse with him for about 45 minutes.
You can pretty much guess, he's a great guy. Very well spoken and obviously well-thought in his positions and attitudes.
He was very complimentary about the puppets I had displayed in the Festival Exibit. He spoke highly of my design sense, style and sense of proportion. I had to go home that night and let my wife deflate my ego for me.
He also was very honest about his view of what it's like "inside" of the "new" Muppets. Though I am unsure of how much of it was priviledged discourse, so I cannot in good conscience repeat anything he said directly to me that was not part of his presentation.
It seems he ascribes very sincerely to the idea that a Muppet character is similar to an "office" (my term). He really doesn't see any problem with a new puppeteer taking over a character as long as the original puppeteer has passed on, reliquished the character, or has been officially "let go" by the people who own said character. In fact, he has done just that in his career.
He is actually the third person to play both Telly and Snuffy. But in stepping into the roles, he was only willing to do so under the above circumstances.
In the case of the second Snuffy puppeteer, he had this to say: "...because I learned from him I can call him one of my teachers as well. And what I learned is that you should never say anything about someone that you wouldn't say to their face." This evidently includes producers on Sesame Street. The inferrence is that the second Snuffy puppeteer was "let go".
But other than that, the talk was pretty much uneventful. He talked about what a character is or could be, indicating the Telly puppet a a physical object asking, "is THIS Telly? No. This is a retired Telly. Right now, today, another Telly is being performed by a stand-in puppeteer in New York while I am here for the festival. Is THAT the REAL Telly? No. Because I'm the real puppeteer for Telly. I'm here. Not in New York. And happily so."
So he made us all stop and think about the grande melange of elements that "make up" a puppet (more precisely Muppet) character.
It was a good event. More to come later.
-Gordon
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