At a recent presentation of my anti-bullying puppet show Helping Drew, during our Q&A, a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, asked "is it magic?!".. referring to the puppetry. I thought for a second and answered "mmmm.. it is a certain kind of magic, yes" and she just had this big, satisfied grin on her face. I love creating magic with puppets and have been in love with this magic since I was a child. The simple magic that's in the imagination of a child is a treasure that we all employ from time to time. When we see a movie with characters made or enhanced by high-quality special effects, we sus ..read more

Monday morning, August 5th, the voice of Ms. Piggy singing "Cuanto le Gusta" was echoing in my head as I packed my car for my trip to the Puppeteers of America National Festival in Swarthmore, PA. We're on our way Pack up your pack And if we stay We won't come back How can we go, we haven't got a dime? But we're going and we're gonna have a happy time Before I get into the day to day schedule of events, I want to mention how important this week was to me as an artist and human being. As puppeteers, we often work in a bubble. As an artist, I crave outside stimulation and a sense of community ..read more

I was saddened to learn today of the untimely passing of puppeteer Andrew Agee. I knew Andrew only through online puppeteer communities and a brief exchange of emails. I feel the least I could do is mention what the energy of Andrew meant to someone who only knew him through his online presence. I became aware of Andrew before I began my own puppet company. He was a regular contributor on Muppet Central and Puppetsmith. I was impressed with Andrew's artistry and the fact that he had produced and performed his own shows where he lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In my early quest to learn puppet buildi ..read more

Helping Drew continues with bookings in the NY metro area and my local school districts. We've had a lot of fun with some great audiences. This past Monday, I was in the recording studio with some of my talented friends to record Up In Arms' next offering Welcome Park. When it finally happens, it all happens so quick. I'll head back to the studio Sunday and master the track and then pick out a 15 minute exerpt myself for a showcase for libraries on Feb., 22. My good friend Pasha over at Project Puppet is helping with Up In Arms website re-design and he sent this fantastic logo for the new lo ..read more

Over the past month, I've had the opportunity to create some new puppets for others and continued with bookings for Helping Drew while launching my next show Welcome Park. The winner of the raffle that I donated chose a female puppet in fuchsia. This is her above in her pretty little bow. In attempts to thin out some of the excess material storage I had, I created another little friendly monster guy below. He is up for adoption over at etsy.  Helping Drew started back up January 10 here in New York with local performances in the Hudson Valley and up to Clifton Park [near Albany]. T ..read more

Photo above is from my latest project which bowed yesterday. I was asked by my friends at Just Off Broadway, Inc. to include a short puppet piece for their Dinner with Santa event. My good friend and fellow puppeteer Rich Hotaling suggested using the Winter's Children poem for a performance by the puppets. My friendly monster Russell, in the foreground, played the part of Wind. With a faux branch of brown leaves, he swayed the branch back and forth as he delivered his poetry with command and character. Drew and Sheila, the humanoid puppets, stepped into the roles of Jack Frost and Ice respec ..read more

I have some puppet build and latest project news I thought would be my next post but, I don't have all the images just yet. Instead, my mind was wrapped around what it means to be a master puppeteer and the idea of realistic hand/rod puppet performance. My promotional video for Helping Drew was shot at the end of a long day and just after a showcase which was just filmed. I knew the producer would need my interview and I can still see how bleary-eyed I was in that clip. I was asked about my goals and blurted out what I thought was the ultimate goal as a child. I had always heard the term "Jim ..read more

I had come home the day prior from the gig in the Bronx presenting Helping Drew to about 500 pre-K through 4th grade students. I was mounting some of the puppets on stands to be sure they properly aired out. After two shows back to back, they get plenty of hand sweat inside. Drew had a loose arm rod that had originally been hot-glued into place and it was time to epoxy the rod into the dowel properly. I took him into my room where I have my make-shift workshop table set up, made a slit in the duct-taped dowel to remove the rod, cleaned it off and snipped the bend at the end in preparation of i ..read more

The past couple of weeks have been a welcome creative boom. After the success of the puppet manipulation workshop with the younger students, my friends at Just Off Broadway, Inc. asked me back to repeat the 2-hour workshop for their teen students. They end their 2-week intensive with a showcase of their class-work and the creative director, my friend Joyce, asked me to make the puppets available for the evening showcase to perform one of the group numbers that we practiced in class. Since it was only the first verse and chorus, I suggested adding a couple of the solo pieces to the beginni ..read more

Helping Drew, my anti-bullying puppet musical has secured a national booking agent, Theatreworks USA, which will begin to secure bookings in their over 2500 outlets this coming school year. Good friends of mine arranged the introduction and we met at their studios in Manhattan to showcase the show. Our first show has been booked for October and I already have a couple shows booked for local schools as well. Recently, I've just been updating some puppets. I've added arm rods and articulated hands to older puppets that didn't have them. I'd also like to build a couple extra small puppets to use ..read more