Interview: Puppeteers For Fears Presents CTHULHU: THE MUSICAL! at Harlow's

Tired of the same old shows? Well, we’ve got you covered. Puppeteers for Fears, an Oregon-based puppet troupe, is embarking on their 2023 tour and have a stop at Harlow’s on July 16th. They will be performing their adaptation of Cthulhu: the Musical!, which combines horror and rock music with puppets and dark humor. BroadwayWorld spoke to playwright Josh Gross and puppeteer Alyssa Mathews about Shakespeare, evil octopi, and Sacramento’s sweet spots.

You're dubbed as Oregon's only "puppet musical horror troupe." How was the idea conceived and how would you describe your work to those who are unfamiliar with it?

Josh: The original idea grew out of two things: my desire to fuse my disparate backgrounds in playing in bands and writing plays into composing a musical, and a friend of mine asking me to write a short puppet horror piece for a Halloween show they were putting together. Fusing all those elements together seemed like a winning combo, and it just kept growing from there into features and a dedicated company. For me, the shorthand way of explaining it is saying it’s like if The Muppets did Rocky Horror, but I do think our style and approach is pretty different from both those properties. 

Alyssa: I always have a short phrase in my back pocket when I try to explain what we do: "We do R-rated horror/sci-fi/comedy/rock musicals with puppets!" That tends to get people interested pretty fast or, at the very least, it gets some questions.

In watching some video excerpts, it's clear there's not another theatre group like you in our area. The most similar show I have seen is Avenue Q, which features puppets and debauchery. How do you distinguish yourself from comparisons to that?

Josh: There actually isn’t much like us anywhere. Only a handful of things in the country that I know of. But to me, the biggest distinction between us and Avenue Q is twofold: 1. Our shows are all puppets and performed inside a puppet house. You don’t see the actors and there are no human characters. So, it’s a more immersive world and puppet experience. And 2. The central concept of Avenue Q is puppets being raunchy and transgressive, and though we're similar in that way, I think our shows aim to have a different energy and style. It’s true our shows are R-rated, but they are about life and death, complex family dynamics, the consequences of technology, and more. We have a show with a whole song exploring the moral implications of museums as they relate to the history of imperialism. But if Avenue Q is the entrance point for folks to find us, then great.

Alyssa: I've heard people compare us to Avenue Q, Meet the Feebles, or Jeff Dunham, but the weirdly most accurate one I've heard is the Dracula Musical scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, of all the things in the world. There are familiar scary characters, comedy, production value, and some damn good songs in that short bit in the movie, but I don't think there's anything truly 100% like us. We're a diamond in a haystack, at the moment.

Your 2023 tour features an original work, Cthulhu: the Musical! Can you tell us what this show is about?

Josh: Cthulhu: the Musical!, is a musical comedy adaptation of horror icon HP Lovecraft’s classic story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” about a mysterious elder god that lies dormant beneath the ocean, manipulating people’s dreams and driving them mad. Because the story is so iconic, it’s well-trod material. But we made it a noir comedy about a detective trying to solve a murder that relates to the cult that worships Cthulhu. But the deeper he is drawn into the mystery the more he unravels psychologically, until he eventually has to confront his own demons. The score includes 12 original songs that are composed to sound somewhere between psych-rock and evil calypso. 

What can audiences expect at a Puppeteers for Fears show?

Josh: We like to say that we do theater for people that didn’t know they like theater; and rock music for people that didn’t know they liked rock music. So other than just a fun night out, I’d say to expect to maybe have your horizons expanded a bit about what both those mediums can be. For the theater peeps though, do know ahead of time that it’s a bit louder than the average musical, but in a good way. 

Alyssa: Expect what you would not normally expect from a cute plush hand-and-rod puppet show! We've got great-looking puppets, talented performers and crew, loud music, humor, spooks, and lots of 'that's what she said' jokes. 

Your lead puppeteer, Alyssa Mathews, is a Sacramento area native. Alyssa, what are you most looking forward to about coming back home? 
 

Alyssa: I'm excited to see my family and some old friends, most of all! I grew up down the hill in the Cool/Greenwood/Garden Valley area and the natural beauty is unmatched there, so that's always something I find myself missing. I did live in Midtown Sac for all of 2022 though, and that's always a fun time as well, so I'm looking forward to hitting up some favorites if I can: Freestyle Clothing Exchange, Burger Patch, Babe's Ice Cream and Donuts, the Co-Op, Zocalo's, the farmer's market...

Could you describe your setup and how the puppets are made and operated?

Josh: We have a 12-foot-wide puppet box with a built-screen that we project our custom interactive digital sets onto, which makes a sealed bubble of puppet reality for the characters to navigate, and then there is a three-piece band in the wings performing the score as the puppeteers sing. The puppets are primarily hand-and-rod style, and they are operated by actors out of sight below the puppet house. 

Alyssa: Yes, our puppets are felt hand-and-rod style with moving mouths, also known as 'Muppet-style' sometimes. 

What is a puppeteer's education and training comprised of?

Josh: Alyssa can probably speak to this better than I can but, despite its reputation, puppetry is actually really challenging and sophisticated as a performance medium, and I’ve found that the people who take to it best have experience in movement-based performance like mime or dance and in improv comedy. Mostly, you have to take it seriously that the puppet is the character, not you as an actor, which involves a surreal sort of detachment/transference to become invisible so that only the puppet is really seen. The hard practical skills you can learn, but the mindset you have to bring to the table. 

Alyssa: I'm a bit of an anomaly and I decided to really take my puppetry education up a notch and get a Masters degree in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut, which is the only place in the whole United States that offers graduate degrees for it. There are many routes with the art form though, and I think that's the beauty of it. A big part of training is definitely movement-based, like Josh said, and just having a good visual eye in general is a big help. It's a performance art, but it's also highly based on visuals and the craft. It encompasses a lot of things, which is why I was so drawn to it, actually. Also, puppets can be so much more physically demanding than you would think, so strength-training and stretching plays a big part in what we do, too.

Josh, you add the words the musical into conversation to see how people will react. What were some duds and what were some successes?

Josh: Ha! Yeah. I was doing that for a while when we first started the company to brainstorm ideas for scripts. The biggest success was definitely Cthulhu: the Musical!. The biggest duds were probably food orders at drive-throughs or something. A lot of confused cashiers isn’t enough for a good script. Fingers crossed we will get to do El Chupacabra the Musical someday, though. 

Josh, before puppets, you were in a punk band. Do you miss that atmosphere? Do you still perform?

Josh: I’ve never really stopped playing in bands (the current one is a rock trio called Thunderchud). They became less active as our fans aged out of going to shows, but when we did the very first Puppeteers for Fears performance, most of the audience were fans of my old punk band, and what a lot of them said was that it had the same manic energy as a punk show, but since they could sit down, they could still enjoy it. And they brought their kids. So, pivoting to musical theater became a way to give that experience a longer lifespan for me as a musician, and the audience. Since PFF tours and primarily performs in rock clubs rather than traditional theaters, to me, the only part that’s really changed is the material we are performing. Which, since iconic punk bands like Green Day, NOFX, and Rancid have all done musical theater projects (NOFX with the co-writer of Avenue Q even), to me it feels like it’s not even that unusual. 

You live in an area known for Shakespeare and traditional theatre. How has Ashland's reception been towards homicidal puppets?

Josh: It’s been mixed. Local people often thank us for “doing something other than Shakespeare,” and root for us to succeed like a local sports team. One local theater came to see our show and then hired half of our cast to do their production of Avenue Q a few months later. I think the dogmatic traditionalists see us as a threat to the established hierarchy, and those outside of it see us as having a rollicking good time. 

Alyssa: It's a small town and it can be hard to hurdle over the dominance that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has for sure, especially when you're as outside-the-box as we are. The company started in Ashland, but most of us actually moved elsewhere to bigger cities where more unconventional art forms thrive. A lot of us (myself included) live in Portland, Oregon now and I'd love to get our community thriving there. 
 

You've mentioned that 2020 was very hard on Puppeteers for Fears. Have you recovered from that time? 

Josh: I mean, have any of us really recovered from 2020? We had to cancel a west coast tour, we lost our rehearsal facility after burning through the company’s savings, and most of our ensemble moved away. It was pretty brutal, but we were able to reinvent our rehearsal process through video chat in a way that may actually make us more viable in the long term by being able to hold on to performers regardless of where they live. It’s a specialized skill set, and it takes a while to learn, so it is hard to bring new folks in from scratch. 

Alyssa: I'll also add that we lost our tour van during the pandemic! We're now touring in two separate cars with ten people total, which is rough. So, in some ways we've made a recovery and in other ways we haven't at all, and it's affected us a huge amount. Everything about what we did was an enormous Covid super-spreader, from being squished behind a puppet house spit-singing and sweating, to touring across states in the heat of summer. We shut down for 3 whole years and weren't even sure we'd come back. When we initiated the discussions about starting up again, there was a lot to consider and it definitely made us much more intentional around what we do, which is actually a big blessing in disguise. I think we're more professional, focused, and passionate as a whole. It's kind of amazing to see how much growth we've done after the chaos.

What is in the future for Puppeteers for Fears? 

Josh: Touring the moon, 2024. Obviously. But seriously, we want to do an east coast tour, and then launch a new show for our tenth anniversary. Plus, we have been pitching a TV/film adaptation for a while. So those are all on the table. At the moment, we are so deep in prep for this tour—which, in the immortal words of Jerry Maguire is “an up-at-dawn pride-swallowing siege that I will never be able to fully explain to anyone”—that it’s hard to think about much else. 

Alyssa: From a strictly puppetry standpoint, I hope to expand our breadth of the art form even more in the future. We've added instances of shadow puppetry to this show for the very first time in our repertoire, which is incredibly exciting. I have ideas for incorporating some larger puppets operated by two puppeteers as well. 

Puppeteers for Fears will be in Sacramento performing Cthulhu: The Musical! for one night only on July 16 at Harlow’s. More information may be found online at www.puppeteersforfears.com.

Photo credit: Puppeteers for Fears

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