cover story

Jim Henson, The Puppeteer

By Gary Tischler

July 23th 2008

Photo by: John E. Barrett of Henson and his characters

“As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make believe continues into adulthood. Certainly I’ve lived my whole life through my imagination. But the world of imagination is there for all of us-a sense of play, of pretending, of wonder. It’s there with us as we live.” (Jim Henson)

“Brace yourself,”  Deborah Macanic, a project director at the Smithsonian Institution’s International Gallery, and SITES, said. “It’s going to get a little noisy down here.”

Noisy isn’t usually a worry at the International Gallery, housed underground in a kiosk-like structure near the Smithsonian castle on the mall. It’s a cool, dignified place where you can view often esoteric, always interesting art and cultural history exhibitions, listen to lectures or watch films.

But then, it’s not every day that the Muppets take up residence around here, and that makes all the difference in the world.  That means kids and families, and lots of them. “It gets very crowded,  too,” Macanic said. “Parents and teachers come with children, and children just naturally want to do things. And there’s plenty to do.”

The occasion is “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World,” a really fantastic traveling exhibition, a celebration really, of the life, works, times, thoughts and impact of the great, iconic puppeteer, story teller, visionary, bearded guru, and film-maker whose life ended suddenly and tragically at the age of 53 in 1990.

Here at the Smithsonian, a couple of floors below, Henson lives. As do the Muppets, Henson’s green alter ego Kermit the Frog, the crowd from “Sesame Street” and “Fraggle Rock” and the scary-in-a-good-way creatures from “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth,” which showed off Henson the visionary of animated films casting every bit as big a lasting shadow as Disney and today’s computer-animated creature creators.

It’s a huge show full of rooms, full of surprises and includes 100 original artworks, drawings, cartoons, storyboards, as well as puppets big and small, all of them affording instant pleasures and acts of recognition. There are props, little sets, from television and movie projects, and a host of photographs of Henson and his company of fellow fantasy travelers, including his wife Jane, at work in the act of creation. There are videos of skits, commercials, scenes from “Sesame Street” and “Fraggle Rock,” or his first television show “Sam and Friends.”

And inevitably, there is a section which resembles a playground, where children and adults-the difference begins to dissolve as you go through the exhibition-can create their own puppet show, and wall faces which kids can rearrange, where the question is often something on the order of “can this face stand one, two or three noses, or maybe just one eye.”

And yes, its noisy around there, as a little towheaded boy holds up a figure of Big Bird, and another kid starts talking behind the little puppet theater, and Big Bird’s yellow little figure bobs up and down.

The exhibition is organized by the Jim Henson Legacy and Sites, the Smithsonian’s Traveling Exhibition arm, along with the Henson Family, the Jim Henson Company, the Muppets Studio LLC and the Sesame Workshop.

It’s easy, of course, to think of kids and the Muppets when you think of the genial, often shy Henson, in his later-life bearded guru incarnation and that’s okay. If Kermit the Frog, a benign, hopeful but not-too-aggressive sort of  Muppet-Puppet, has always been seen as a gentle alter ego of Henson’s, the much beloved puppet characters are not the sum total of Henson’s achievement.

What’s really cool about this comprehensive, big exhibition is that it’s emotionally as big as the wing-span of Big Bird, while allowing Henson to take his place as a major figure in American and world cultural and entertainment history.  Henson and his life made a difference, and it’s almost self-evident in the crowds of adults and kids that make their way through the exhibition.

It’s also a great time-travel machine, an example of exhibition as life story, and much of that story resonates loudly in the Washington, DC area where Henson first made his mark and tried out all the figures, ideas-some of them avant garde in their own way as a Da Da gathering-that would later be characteristic components of the world of Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock, not to mention the grim-and-Grimm-like fairy tale worlds come to life of “Labyrinth” and “The Dark Crystal.”

“By the time this particular project came to be considered, I HAD to be a part of it,” Macanic said. “I have a grown son, and he was very much into Sesame Street and all the characters when he was a little boy. So naturally, I started to watch it and become interested in it. He sort of moved on, like kids will do. I didn’t.”

“It’s very much a local-boy-makes-good story,” she added. “This is really where everything got started, it’s the genesis of Jim Henson’s world.”

Although he was born in Greenville, Mississippi, Hanson grew up in Hyattsville, and went to school at the University of Maryland. While at Maryland, he created his first puppet show, called “Sam and Friends,” which would air on WRC TV after the news. One of the friends was the first incarnation of Kermit. He also started doing commercials for local businesses, including Wilkens Coffee, which was a popular staple at Harold’s, a legendary Georgetown coffee shop frequented by the likes of Edward Bennett Williams and Dizzie Gillespie as well as Georgetowner staffers. The commercials were funny, aggressive and direct and memorable, and starred Rowlf the Dog.

Many of the early sketches, story boards and other material are on display here, including pictures of a young, beardless Henson. At that point, he was a young man on the move with a fertile imagination. He went on to create ever more complicated puppets, even though one of his many mantras is “Simple Is Good.” From commercials and “Sam and Friends,” he went on to be his very own brand of puppeteer and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, Arthur Godfrey, and later, the first year of Saturday Night Live. He formed a company of other artists, puppeteers and friends who would stay with him and build a creative empire.

Eventually, his Muppets-Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Mahna Mahna, Big Bird, the Cookie Monster-joined up for the fledgling early morning education television pioneer “Sesame Street” where they became permanent residents. It’s almost impossible to weigh the influence of the characters, their sheer ability to lie in the memory of adults years and decades from childhood.

Henson was a constant innovator, as you can see by the Oscar-nominated short film “Time Piece,” a lively and entertaining film examining time and how we think about it.

“He was constantly thinking about how to  improve, and expand ideas about puppetry,” Macanic said. “He took puppets out from behind the classic theater with curtains of everybody’s childhood. He showed us how to use puppets on television and in film. “The Dark Crystal” is a light-years step forward. In many ways, he was a pioneer. He anticipated so much of what is being done in the field today.”

Henson’s work also maintained and even revived an interest in puppetry as an art form, on stage, in film, in video, on television. It’s become very accepted to use puppets on stage again. The huge success of “The Lion King,” Disney’s Broadway version, has a lot to do with the expansive, generous and imaginative use of all manners of puppets, small ones, large, looming ones and figures that blur completely the role of humans and puppets. The hit musical “Avenue Q” is another example.

“Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” functions on all sorts of levels. It gives great honor to Henson in all his guises: innovator, master puppeteer, inventor, actor, writer, child, businessman and entrepreneur, soulful philosopher. And while the emphasis is on the whole range of his accomplishments, the Muppets are never very far from the center of that world. Henson, after all, acted, voiced, and sometimes sang, many of the characters, especially Kermit, who insisted that it was “not easy being green.” In fact, Kermit turned being green into a badge of  honor.  Frank Sinatra sang the song too.

The Muppets are alive in this exhibition too, and they energize and animate the young and older kids coming through.

Jim Henson would probably love moving around in this exhibition. By the time he died shockingly after a bout with pneumonia, he had become, among his many roles, something of a guru, and he certainly looked the part.

You can just see him shambling through, explaining, taking on roles, sitting down by the old puppet theater, voicing out Kermit, Kermit and the bearded man as the pied piper.  Behind them come:
The Eel, the flower-eating monster, the hillbilly singer, Kermit as Protozoa, Lenny the Lizard, Silver Beak, Rowlf the Dog, the Newspig, Nigel, Mean Mama, Wally Whoopie, Bad Bart, Bip Bippadotta, Captain Vegetable, the Geefle, Harold Happy, King Peter the Persnickety, Mr. Essex, Big Bird and Little Bird, Sammy the Snake, Thomas Twiddlebug, the Yip Yip Martians, Miss Piggy, Ernie, Bert and the Amazing Mumford among so many.

Followed by the rest of us.

(“Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” runs through October 5)

Photos: Bert & Ernie: Photo by John E. Barrett. TM & © 2007 SesameWorkshop.