A Q&A with the stand-up puppeteer from Greensboro.
Becoming a stand-up puppeteer
At UNCG, their theater majors end up doing a one-person show kind of thing, and I had written one for one of my friends before. Then another of my friends asked me to help him write one, and I ended up writing it as a puppet show. Then I made all of the puppets for that, and that's basically the first time that I've built puppets.
Then when the Ultimate Comics Challenge (at the Idiot Box) came around last year, see, I like comedy and performing, but I don't necessarily like being the center of attention. So I figured I would give that a try with a puppet, and make the puppet himself a stand-up, and rather than doing a ventriloquist act or something like that, I completely took myself out of it, and it was just the puppet delivering stand-up about the hardships of being a stand-up.
Build-A-Puppet
Typically, I use polyfoam for the face construction, and then whatever suits the character. I do sketches and things first, and then I go to the fabric store to see if they have anything that fits. A lot of times it's fleece and fur.
Fleece is the easiest to work with, but depending on how it was constructed, it is harder to sew through furry things.
The time it takes to build each puppet varies depending on the style and how elaborate they're going to be. Since I stitch them all by hand, just making the head takes 35 to 50 hours of work. And some are a little more elaborate than others. Gabe the Jungle Herald, who has an eye mechanism inside of him, that one took even more time.
A lot of the puppets I've made also have teeth. Like one that I built who was a ball-scavenger, who roams around tennis courts and eats tennis balls, he needed some sharp teeth.
No respect
It was definitely a challenge at first, especially since I am not a ventriloquist. I'm just a puppeteer, so people think it's going to be kid-oriented or goofball. And so you have this hurdle you must overcome immediately once you come onto the stage. You have to hit the ground running and up the humor even more just to get them to respect you.
I didn't perform in the Ultimate Comics Challenge this year, but the year before that, I made it into the finals. I was very shocked. I wasn't expecting to make it into the finals, especially since many of the other performers had been doing stand-up for like three years, and I had been doing it for about six months at the time. So it was cool. I think some people voted for me kind of because they remembered the puppet. So in competition-based settings, I felt that could be a slight bonus. Getting past the first round, I thought maybe it was because of the novelty aspect. Getting to the finals, it helped me respect my act, too.
Meet Puppet Anthony Jaynum
Since I was already on the Ultimate Comics Challenge ballot sheet as A.J., but I didn't want to say my name all the time because I wanted the puppet to be the focus of attention, I just gave him another name that used the 'A' and the 'J.' He was one of the puppets I used for that one-man show that I had written for a friend.
He was kind of the grand thespian character, so I kind of took him out of the show, and since in that show he was the one that was the most performance-oriented, that's why I chose to use him for the stand-up. And the voice just happened through the process of stand-up and trying things out. It's a little Kermit-y while trying to figure out what is sort of a classic puppet-esque voice that would encompass what he was about and the hardships of being a puppet as sort of like his race, all the prejudice puppets face and that sort of thing.
His exhibit
It was an art show that I had won during the Center for Visual Artists (CVA) all-member jury show. So it's in the CVA gallery, and it's going to be a large sampling of my puppets and a large amount of my paintings and drawings, too. Most of the visual-art stuff I do is about cluttered spaces, and kind of finding the structure amongst the clutter and that kind of thing.
Working with puppets
It's very easy after doing puppet work for a long time to forget everything I've said. When I work on different characters, I have to videotape myself because after a while, I get into it, and the puppet will start riffing.
I don't really like having grand aspirations. My sculpture teacher at Greensboro College had a motto that I follow: "Just make good stuff." So I always just hope that the next thing I work on is a little bit better than what I did before.
Contact Joe Scott at movieshowjoe@gmail.com.
