Short trailer of a web series I recently had the pleasure of performing the puppet character on! Can’t wait to share the whole series with you! – Brett.
A sneaky glimpse of the brand new comedy series by Cheeky Moon, premiering in 2021.
Could this mysterious self-help organisation be a cult? Find out next year on IT’S A CULT!
Starring Christine Milo, Rhys McCane, Bronte Pearce and Sam Monaghan.
With Luisa Prosser, Daren King and Mark Grimes as the voice of Professor James Gilmour.
Written and directed by Claire Coe & Alastair Craig
Also appearing among the many splendid faces in this teaser: Amy Currie, Drew Lochrie, Rosa Sottile, Coen Gilbert, Dan Beeston, Tamara McLaughlin, Taylor Edwards and Jordan Schulte.
Directors of Photography in excerpts shown: Sean Smith / Dean Swindell / Owen Smith & David Aponas (Short Stack Productions)
Special guest puppetry by Brett Hansen of Larrikin Puppets.
Larrikin Puppets offers dynamic school incursions that align closely with the Design and Technologies curriculum. Our engaging performances and hands-on workshops are also ideal for Book Week celebrations, encouraging creativity, storytelling, and technical understanding of puppetry.
Schools across South East and Central Queensland regularly book Larrikin Puppets for our captivating puppet shows and performance workshops. Students not only enjoy the laughter and fun of the show, but also learn about puppet design, movement, and storytelling — all valuable components of the Design and Technologies curriculum.
Story Time with Larrikin Puppets
One of our popular Book Week programs is Story Time With Larrikin Puppets. Performed in schools and council libraries, this 30-minute show features interactive storytelling, songs, skits, games, and a sing-along with beloved puppet characters. Our storyteller Elissa reads books by Australian authors Hazel Edwards, Glenn Martin, and Caroline Stills, with options tailored for both early and upper primary years.
Our newly introduced sock puppet craft and performance workshops are a creative extension of the Design and Technologies curriculum. These workshops are tailored to age groups 5–8 and 9+, allowing students to explore both design and function as they craft and perform with their own puppets.
Our puppet shows are most popular with Prep to Grade 2 students, while our Design and Technologies-focused workshops are enjoyed by students across all year levels, including upper primary. We also offer these programs for Vacation Care services.
All facilitators have Blue Cards: Brett (1161011/3) and Elissa (690261/3). Larrikin Puppets holds Public Liability Insurance through Duck For Cover Entertainers Insurance. We are committed to delivering safe, educational, and enjoyable experiences for all students.
Brett and Elissa have undertaken three months of professional development in the USA, receiving advanced training from puppeteers who have worked on The Muppets and Sesame Street. This experience informs the high quality and authenticity of our work, and strengthens our commitment to the Design and Technologies learning outcomes.
Flossy and Frazzamatazz had a fun night out at Shoebox Theatre Company’s excellent production of “Avenue Q” in Toowoomba.
We ran a pre-audition puppetry workshop in September 2018, and then we returned to Toowoomba in November for a revised workshop with the chosen cast, and assisting with specific scenes they might need help with.
The September workshop made it onto Seven News!
We love Avenue Q and have trained a few different casts. If you’d like some puppetry training, contact us here:
Having trained a few casts of Avenue Q over the years we were delighted to teach some new people the skills required to bring this wonderful production to life with good puppetry. I love Avenue Q. I first saw the show when an Australian and New Zealand touring production came to QPAC in 2010. I’ve seen the off-Broadway production in New York City twice (the second time we were lucky enough to be taken on a backstage tour to meet all the puppets and have a look at the sets up close). In 2012 I auditioned for a role in the Brisbane Arts Theatre production of Avenue Q, and ended up being cast as co-puppeteer for Trekkie Monster and Nicky, as well as being the puppetry trainer for the whole puppeteer cast. My official title was ‘puppetry consultant’.
In 2014 I was asked to train a new Avenue Q cast at Brisbane Arts Theatre. New director, new cast, new production team. In 2017 I trained the Sunnybank Theatre Group production of Avenue Q.
Now in 2019, this is Toowoomba’s first local production of Avenue Q with performances taking place in February.
Elissa and I had a great time attending the show at USQ Artsworx last Friday 8 February 2019.
– Brett.
Larrikin Puppets had another busy and fulfilling year. Having celebrated five years in business at the end of 2017, we felt it was time to invest in slick new professional photos and a promo video to showcase our exciting, colourful and fun puppetry to serious clients looking for something different and memorable.
Elissa got much more involved in the puppet shows with her characters Flossy and Marina making a big impact on audiences, as well as her role as a human presenter in some segments and a story teller.
2018 saw Larrikin Puppets making a total of 135 presentations (puppet shows and/or workshops). That’s 135 sets of puppet show audiences or puppetry workshop participants smiling and laughing at the zany antics of Troggg, Frizzby, Marina, Flossy and all of their friends. With an average of 40-50 people per session, that’s a lot of smiles and laughter! Here are the specifics of where all of this puppet fun took place in 2018: – We performed 1 free charity puppet show at the Lady Cliento Children’s Hospital in South Brisbane for The Starlight Foundation, who help improve the lives of seriously ill children.
– 5 performances took place at corporate functions around Brisbane and Northern NSW. One of these was a pre-movie adults only puppet show at the Brisbane premiere screening of The Jim Henson Company’s “The Happytime Murders”. Another was a Christmas In July dinner at a packed restaurant. We also performed for the staff and families of international corporation Ernst & Young – one of the world’s “big 4” accountancy firms.
– We ran our two day intensive “Island Puppetry Workshop” again on Bribie Island, and we had an even bigger class than last year – again consisting of participants from interstate (Sydney, Canberra), Central Queensland and Brisbane. We also ran some puppetry workshops for Shoebox Theatre Company’s upcoming production of “Avenue Q” in Toowoomba. This made the local Channel 7 news!
– We performed 5 theatre stage shows this year, including “Show Of Hands” – our improv comedy stage show featuring TV monitor puppetry as part of the 2018 Anywhere Theatre Festival.
– 11 puppet shows took place in retail outlets; 1 Bunnings hardware store in Maryborough and 10 shopping centre shows taking place in Gracemere (Rockhampton) and Toowoomba during school holidays.
– 14 presentations took place at libraries around Central Queensland and the Sunshine Coast. This included a couple of school holiday puppetry workshops and the launch of “Story Time with Larrikin Puppets”. Our story time puppet shows feature a story book from one of four Australian Children’s authors and were presented in libraries this year as part of Queensland’s First 5 Forever initiative. – 17 birthday party puppet shows took place all over South East Queensland. As always these shows were performed in back yards, living rooms, garages and council parks. Most were performed by myself, but Elissa joined me to perform at a few of the parties for older kids.
– We performed 23 puppet shows at public community fetes and festivals all over South East Queensland and Central Queensland. Some festivals had us in our own section of the event with performances throughout the day. Other festivals had us as a main stage act striking on and off stage between other performers. One event in particular was the Horizon Festival where we got to perform alongside several other puppeteers, including Spare Parts Puppet Theatre from Western Australia. – 24 school performances/workshops took place around Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay Region, Boyne Valley and Banana Shire, plus a special visit to the “Australian International School Hong Kong” in Kowloon, Hong Kong while we were over there visiting family. Our puppet character Frazzamatazz made the trip to entertain our two young nieces, so a couple of puppet presentations were arranged at the school they attend. – There were additional visits to schools for 9 Vacation Care/OSHC presentations. For some it was a puppet show, for others it was a puppetry workshop, and on some visits it was both, or several presentations throughout the day.
– Our most popular bookings this year were for children aged 0-5 at childcare centres and kindergartens. 27 childcare and kindy puppet shows took place this year all over Queensland. They absolutely love the puppet shows. We also performed our “Story Time With Larrikin Puppets” show at a few centres as well. I am always very grateful for any opportunity to perform puppetry on television or film, as these opportunities are very rare in Australia. This year our puppets were seen nationally on popular children’s infotainment TV show “Totally Wild”, currently celebrating 25 years on air:
A children’s fantasy-drama TV series I did some puppetry work on in late 2017 – “The Bureau of Magical Things” (by Jonathan M. Shift Productions) premiered on Australian television this year, and soon after started screening on Nickelodeon in the USA and the UK, with translated/dubbed versions premiering in many other countries. I performed a magical pogo stick:
Larrikin Puppets was a finalist business at the 2018 Moreton Bay Region Business Excellence & Innovation Awards. While we didn’t win the award in our category (Marketing Excellence) we enjoyed entertaining everybody at the gala awards presentation night with Troggg and Marina. For professional development (and fun!) we attended several events as part of “The Jim Henson Retrospectacle” in Wellington, New Zealand. Characters from The Muppets, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock came together to celebrate their innovative creator (and my inspiration) Jim Henson (1936-1990) with comedian/musician Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords member and composer of songs from the 2011 and 2014 Muppet films) and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Having met quite a few Henson puppeteers from The Muppets and Sesame Street in the USA a few years ago, we had the great pleasure of meeting some more inspirational American Henson performers at this event – Karen Prell (Red Fraggle), Matt Vogel (Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, The Count), Peter Linz (Ernie, Walter, Herry Monster), Carmen Osbahr (Rosita) and New Zealand puppeteer Jeremy Dillon (The Moe Show).
Frazzamatazz and Brett Hansen with Muppeteer Karen Prell (Red Fraggle from Fraggle Rock).
Brett Hansen and Muppeteer Matt Vogel (Kermit the Frog, Lew Zealand and Floyd Pepper on The Muppets, Big Bird and The Count on Sesame Street).Brett Hansen and Elissa Jenkins with Muppeteer Peter Linz (Ernie and Herry Monster from Sesame Street, Walter from The Muppets).Elissa Jenkins and Brett Hansen with Muppeteer Carmen Osbahr (Rosita from Sesame Street).Brett Hansen and Elissa Jenkins with New Zealand puppeteer Jeremy Dillon (The Moe Show).
Larrikin Puppets continues to flourish. We went on a few regional tours this year, and even upgraded to a larger vehicle! We could no longer fit everything into a small car, so now we use a van. We achieved our goal to perform more shopping centre and library shows, and continued working towards some of our much larger goals. Arts grant applications were submitted (and sadly rejected), songs and scripts were written, Skype meetings and email exchanges took place with musicians, authors and other artists we’d like to collaborate with, and new characters were introduced – including Scrambles (a nervous little red monster) and The New Baby (a cute little newborn who interrupts the show to be soothed to sleep through song and given a name by the audience).
It’s hard to know what 2019 may bring. We will continue to work towards achieving some of our really big dreams, and also see if we can reach a total of 200 performances. We won’t be taking any overseas trips in 2019 (unless we’re booked to bring our show to Singapore or the UAE like many of our peers in the children’s entertainment scene) so it means more time available to perform more shows. Our final event for 2018 is the Ipswich New Year’s Eve celebration. This was supposed to happen last year but the event was cancelled due to a large storm. Troggg is again booked to perform MC duties on stage all evening as he introduces bands, magic acts, costumed character shows and fireworks, as well as the performance of our puppet show.
Merry Christmas and thank you for all of your support. It’s been another great year!
Brett Hansen
Coming up this weekend we have a Christmas puppet show at Tewantin Community Kindergarten on Friday, Charlotte’s 3rd birthday in Cornubia on Saturday, and a corporate Christmas party on Sunday in Brisbane CBD for Queensland Police Legacy!
Whether we win an award or not this Friday night at the Moreton Bay Region Business Excellence & Innovation Awards, we still have important work to do for the rest of the weekend:
A Christmas puppet show at Guppy’s Early Learning Centre Caboolture on Saturday afternoon, followed by a night time performance at Carols In The Park Bribie Island. And on Sunday the puppets will be celebrating Isabella’s 3rd birthday in Ascot.
Bookings have started coming in for 2019 so contact us today at www.larrikinpuppets.com.au 🙂
Love puppetry? Love the arts and entertainment industry? Larrikin Puppets is seeking a bubbly, fun, tech-savvy casual contract Booking Agent with a passion for administration, tour management and telesales for 3-5 hours a week commencing February 2019.
This role will suit someone who’s already set up as a Virtual Assistant who can work from their own home office. You must have an ABN and be based in Australia. $25/hour.
We also welcome applications from students seeking practical experience in arts and entertainment. Join Larrikin Puppets in our latest phase of growth! Opportunity for more hours into the future if our strategy works!
Not afraid to pick up the phone and sell our awesome suite of puppet shows and workshops? In fact, do you relish the idea? Then email your expression of interest and resume to elissa@larrikinpuppets.com.au.
Larrikin Puppets was launched six years ago today! Happy Birthday to us! We perform puppet shows at childcare centres, schools, festivals, libraries, parties, shopping centres and more! We also run puppetry performance workshops and provide a puppet MC service.
Book puppets for your event today!
www.larrikinpuppets.com.au
Flashback – USA, 2016
Australian kids entertainers Larrikin Puppets (based on sleepy Bribie Island – North of Brisbane in Queensland) spent three months in the USA for professional development in 2016. Much of this time was spent meeting Jim Henson puppeteers, and participating in some formal training.
In New York City, we attended casual puppetry workshops at The Puppet Kitchen with Michael Schupbach. There we met several other puppeteers – both independent performers and Henson stars from Sesame Street and The Muppets, as well as cast members of Broadway’s Avenue Q.
Brett participated in the intensive Beyond The Sock workshop at the University of North Texas under Jim Henson puppeteers Marty Robinson and Noel MacNeal, both involved in Sesame Street and The Muppets. Marty is known for being the performer of Telly Monster and Mr. Snuffleupagus, and Noel is known for his lead role as Bear from Bear In The Big Blue House.
We also spent a bit of time in Los Angeles with Jim Henson Company puppeteers Grant Baciocco and Russ Walko.
Left: Troggg in front of The Jim Henson Company (Hollywood, California). Top Right: Troggg in front of Kaufman Astoria Studios (Queens, NYC), where they film Sesame Street. Bottom Right: Frazzamatazz and Brett performing (in Denton, Texas) under the watchful eyes of Henson puppeteers Noel MacNeal and Marty Robinson during the ‘Beyond the Sock’ puppetry workshop.
By Brett Hansen
