Troggg has a brand new puppet van!
Eventually we’ll have it wrapped in our colourful Larrikin Puppets branding and artwork.
We’ve been travelling more than ever for puppet shows, story time performances and puppetry workshops throughout South East Queensland, Central Queensland and beyond, so it was finally time to upgrade from the hatchback!
If you’re planning an event, we’d love to bring the fun to you. We perform throughout Queensland and interstate. Ask us about our travel options and pricing.
Feedspot Blog Reader have kindly listed Larrikin Puppets on their Top 75 Puppet Blogs and Websites for Puppeteers and Puppet Designers.
To be one of the Top 75 Puppet Blogs means that people are reading all about our adventures. From the suburbs of Brisbane to the Queensland outback, and all the way across the ocean to New York, Los Angeles and Texas where we spent several months in 2016.
to enjoy too. Our puppet blogs showcase a lot of information about these things. Most of our bookings are 30 minute puppet show of songs, games, jokes, skits and comical interaction with the audience, performed in the puppetry style of The Muppets and Sesame Street.
In most cases, our puppet shows are followed by an additional presentation lasting about 5 minutes where Brett (and Elissa at some of the larger events) demonstrates to the audience how all the puppets work. Then we do a 5-10 minute meet-and-greet were the kids can get their photo taken with Troggg the blue monster. All up it’s about a 45 minute performance. Some of our bookings have been found via reading our exciting puppet blogs.
For babies and 1-2 year olds, as well as children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) we offer an interactive show, filled with all the colour and musical fun of the regular show, but the puppeteer also emerges from behind the stage throughout the show with various cute and fluffy animal puppets for each child to see up close. We have also performed shows in hospitals for cancer patients, as well as shows in schools for the deaf, where translators perform sign language to explain what Troggg and his furry friends are saying. We try to cover these topics in our puppet blogs too.
Monitor puppetry is the style of puppetry developed by Jim Henson for performance on film and television productions. Unlike traditional live performance puppetry, the puppeteers don’t look at their puppets. They perform their characters up high above their heads, and watch their puppetry in a TV monitor. This enables the puppeteer to see if the puppet has good eye focus, good lip sync, and is able to walk correctly into a frame, and perform many tasks within that frame without looking stupid.
This is why the puppetry on The Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and all associated TV shows and movies look so good on screen. It’s because the puppeteers are able to see exactly how their puppets will look to the viewer at home. This is a perk that most actors don’t get to enjoy. A human actor must perform their scenes without ever looking at themselves on any monitor. Whereas puppeteers are blind on set if they have to crouch and hide behind tables and props without being able to see what they’re doing. The puppet is the star, and so the puppet (like human actors) still performs its scenes as normal. But the hidden puppeteer is the one controlling the puppet. So the puppeteer is allowed to watch their puppets on the TV monitor to make sure the movements are perfect. It wouldn’t be fair to expect the puppeteer to perform blind.
Monitor puppetry is a great way for puppeteers to practice their movements. From subtle facial emotions to wild arm movements, watching your puppetry skills on a monitor is a very good way to practice and improve.
Brett Hansen at Larrikin Puppets has been practicing and perfecting his puppetry skills since the age of three, and has taught many workshops in theatre, film and schools on the basic movements of Muppet-style puppetry. He even produced a live monitor puppetry improv show, where audiences could watch the cast of puppeteers at work, while also being able to watch a large screen displaying only the puppets being performed into the camera. This was a live example of how the puppeteers see their puppetry on the monitor, and then that performance is broadcast/displayed onto the screen for the audience to see.
But as there has never been any formal training in monitor puppetry in Australia, Brett’s only training has been both at The Puppet Kitchen in New York City (under Sesame Street’s Michael Schupbach), and at the advanced, intensive ‘Beyond the Sock’ puppetry workshop at the University of North Texas (under The Muppets and Sesame Street’s Marty Robinson and Noel MacNeal).
Brett’s wife and business partner Elissa Jenkins also received some training at The Puppet Kitchen in New York, and this was her first training. She has since continued to practice her skills and has also started joining Brett as a secondary puppeteer at some of the larger events (such as Woodford Folk Festival and Paradise Resort Gold Coast).