Interview: Director Patrick Bristow on Improv, Puppetry, and the Lasting Appeal of PUPPET UP! – UNCENSORED

Think these puppets are wholesome? Puppet Up! – Uncensored gleefully disagrees.

Mixing live improv with classic Jim Henson–style puppetry, the nearly 20-year-old puppet show for grown-ups brings its latest iteration to the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre from February 20 through March 1.

Created in 2005 by legendary puppeteer and award-winning director Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson) and directed by Patrick Bristow (“Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”), Puppet Up! – Uncensored features more than 80 “Miskreant” puppets and a cast of professional puppeteers from The Jim Henson Company. The production—filled with sketches created by audience suggestions—combines improvised puppet scenes projected onto screens above the stage with the puppeteers performing in full view below.  

It’s an onstage spectacle notoriously hard to categorize, with Brian Henson himself telling BroadwayWorld last year that “it’s a hard show to describe.”  

BroadwayWorld sat down with Bristow, a longtime improv actor himself, to get the lowdown on what audiences can expect from the Muppet-inspired, adults-only puppet show.  

A lot of people call “Puppet Up” a hard show to describe. Why do you think that is?

I think because the minute you say improv, people think “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”—that parlor-game style of improv that has almost a stand-up feel. Then you say puppets, and people immediately think of the Muppets, which has a wholesome connotation.

What we’ve done is bring Jim Henson’s irreverent humor back to the forefront—with the family’s blessings and input. The improv we do is less like “Whose Line” and more like what you’d see at the Groundlings: short-form improvised scenes.

So people go, “I can’t quite wrap my head around this.” But if you say we’re using improvisation to create Saturday Night Live–style scenes, and we’re using puppets, they tend to get it.

It’s definitely not a kids’ show. What makes it adult-only?

Most of our audience is adult, and in most venues they can have a cocktail. And adults get to tell the puppets what they think the puppets should be doing: that might be an acrimonious divorce settlement happening between a red crab and a one-eyed alien. The whimsy is built in because they’re puppets, but the adult situations can go places. If we’re unencumbered, it can be fun and a little naughty. That was Jim’s jam outside of what we know him for.

Not having kids under 14 allows adults to relax. If something gets a little blue or an F-bomb drops, people don’t feel tense laughing.  

Improv always amazes me. Do performers have any kind of roadmap, or is it truly spontaneous?

Our improvisers don’t pre-plan. They may know a structure—like an improvised game show—and get the title or subject from the audience. They might know a structure like, ‘Oh, we're doing an improvised game show,’ and we get the subject and the title from the audience . . . but anything that's coming out of their mouth and anything they're doing is new and unique to that performance

Are the cast members primarily puppeteers who learned improv, or improvisers who learned puppetry?

In the beginning, it was mostly puppeteers, and I was brought in to teach improv. As years have gone by, most of the puppeteers that have come into the fold already do have some improv, and it's just getting them into our style. We also have performers who were experienced improvisers and learned puppetry from the ground up. That’s like learning a musical instrument—and one that changes every time, because every puppet feels different, even if they look identical.

Are you a puppeteer yourself, or strictly the emcee?

I’m the host, so I’m tangentially involved. I’ve done a bit of puppeteering over the years, but it’s too noble an art form for me to smirch with my meager talent. I’m not being modest—it’s really hard.

You’ve done so many things as an actor, comedian, and director. What keeps you coming back to this show?

It’s the best job in the world, my God! I get to set up the show, order the cast, sit in a chair on stage, get suggestions from the audience, and then watch along with them. And then when I feel like, ‘OK, I think that one's done,’ I give a signal, the lights go out and we move on to the next one. That’s a dream job.

Does the unpredictability of it all ever make you anxious? Do you ever think, ‘Is it going to work tonight? Are they going to be able to pull this off?’ Or you really just trust the cast to make it amazing every time. 

Kind of the latter now. After all these years, they're all people who I completely trust to bring it. Improv is a batting average, and the audience is on your side. So when something maybe doesn't really hit a home run, the audience is right there rooting for you, even though you just got a base hit.

I don't have worries about that, but I can have a worry sometimes about, like, ‘Oh, that suggestion is going to really dark territory. I hope my cast realizes how dangerous this is.’  We mine comedy from social ills and bad behavior, but I trust the cast to honor the suggestion without going too far.

Have you ever had to rein in the cast or stop a scene?

There have been a couple times where I went, ‘Oh, no,’ and I blacked it out. It was a shock laugh. The audience was like, what the hell? And then the lights come back up, and everyone just thinks, ‘Did that really happen?’ And it's kind of fun to end it that way.

Tell me about the puppets themselves.

Some are, like, 30 years old, and they've been refurbished a million times. And they're from, let's say, an old Jim Henson Productions TV show. Maybe forgotten except by die-hard fans now, but it wasn't part of the Muppet universe. And then there have been puppets built over the years for our show, specifically. And sometimes when other projects end, we inherit those puppets. So it's a real combination.

How do performers choose which puppet to use?

We have the puppet racks on stage. You see a wall of about 80 puppets. And then if I call some people up and I go, ‘OK, this next improv takes place at a vacation timeshare,’ and they'll just go for whichever one it is that they're feeling the vibe of for that moment.

Can audience members get a closer look at the puppets after the show?

They can come to the edge of the stage, about eight feet away, until the ushers shoo them out.  

Do people ever compare this to Avenue Q? You know, because they’re both adult-only puppet shows? 

That’s really where the similarities end. But then our puppeteers are working in the Henson TV puppeteering style. They're holding these puppets above their heads. The puppet's head is around seven feet in the air—we have a camera on a tripod that is mounted to get the puppets, but not the puppeteer—and we have two giant screens on stage where you can watch the puppets enlarged. You can see what you're used to seeing on TV, but glance down to the stage, and the puppeteers are fully lit up, fully available, for you to see how they're doing it. It's really the first time that people have been able to see Henson style of puppeteering without the puppeteers hidden.

I can’t wait to see it!

You don’t have to be nervous. It’s one of those shows where I can confidently say: Come, you’ll have a good time.

Puppet Up! - Uncensored will play Feb. 20 - Mar. 1 at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre, 1615 Vine St. in Hollywood. For more information and tickets go to www.puppetup.com.