On Saturday 24 October 2026, Elissa and I took our puppets on stage at the Gallery of Modern Art for Henson Heads: The Big Puppet Game Show, part of QAGOMA’s Make, Believe, Magic: The Worlds of The Jim Henson Company. When we announced it a few weeks prior we were looking forward to it, and the night turned out to be even more fun than we had hoped.
Setting Up Behind the Scenes
For this event we put together a portable two-person puppet hide, so Elissa and I could both fit behind it with our scripts in front of us. It’s a narrow portable camping bar table dressed in blackout curtain fabric, with comfy fitness mats to sit on and plenty of room underneath for our legs and heads. We used fairy lights so there was no shadow falling across our scripts and songs. We usually prefer rolly stools or standing, but a hide like this works well for small spaces and for hosting or compere gigs, and a narrow playboard keeps the puppets close to the audience.
Meeting the Talent
It was a real treat to meet our fellow performers: Aimon Clark (IsoTriv), Emma Holland (Have You Been Paying Attention?), Ranger Stacey (Agro’s Cartoon Connection) and Zachary Ruane (Aunty Donna). These are TV faces we have watched on our screens, and it was lovely to chat with each of them, both as puppets and as humans. The puppets had some wonderful conversations of their own, including Zach chatting with Frazzamatazz and Marina, and Ranger Stacey making some new puppet friends.
The Puppet Segments
The puppet segments were scripted by the comedians themselves, and the banter between our puppets and the celebrity talent on stage had the audience laughing from start to finish. Earlier this year we performed our Kids Comedy Puppet Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, so it was great to perform adult comedy written by people who also perform at MICF and the Edinburgh Fringe and on Logie Award winning television. Our puppets were in very good hands as far as the lines went, and we gave everything we had to the puppetry and voice work so the delivery did the writing justice.
Frazzamatazz played Casper the Gronk, Oscar the Grouch’s brother, in a comedy interview with a very different voice from the one he uses at our children’s shows. Marina was her usual self with a bit more wit and some edgier adult humour. She arrived ready to give the audience some early childhood education, only to be told that the cultural elite at GOMA already knew all of that, which sent her into a full personality crisis about her own worth. That segment also brought in Freerange the Chicken, who earned a round of applause and riotous laughter from the audience, just as he does at our everyday children’s shows.
Elissa and Brett in the Interview Chairs
Another special part of the night was the segment where Elissa and I came out from behind the hide as ourselves. We sat in the interview chairs for a brief chat about puppetry and our work with Larrikin Puppets, which was a nice change of pace after performing hidden with puppets. It’s not often that we get to talk about the craft in front of a live audience in such a special setting, surrounded by an exhibition celebrating the work that inspired me to become a puppeteer in the first place.
The Finale
The show closed with the whole cast singing the Goodbye song from Bear in the Big Blue House, a Jim Henson production and a fitting choice since some of the puppets from that show are on display in the exhibition. We sang it with funny new lyrics referencing moments from the night, and Casper (Frazz) added a rap verse of his own.
Thank You, QAGOMA
It was an honour to be invited to be part of this event, and to take part in the Make, Believe, Magic program again alongside the Family Fun Days. Emma and Aimon told us afterwards how much they enjoyed working with us, which meant a lot, and we would love to work with them again. Thank you to Aimon Clark (IsoTriv), Emma Holland (Have You Been Paying Attention?), Ranger Stacey (Agro’s Cartoon Connection), Zachary Ruane (Aunty Donna) and everyone at QAGOMA, and to the big audience who laughed along with us. All photos in this post are by Greg Jones. We’ll be back at GOMA for another Family Fun Day on Sunday 24 January 2027, so we hope to see you there.
Brett and Elissa
Larrikin Puppets
