How Brian Henson’s Adults-Only Show ‘Puppet Up! Uncensored’ Became a Los Angeles Staple

There are certain things, when you live in Los Angeles, that are absolute must-dos, especially in the warmer weather months: see a show at the Hollywood Bowl (but leave before the fireworks); watch a movie at an outdoor venture (Hollywood Forever Cemetery being a favorite); and, in the past few years, travel to the Jim Henson Studios to watch a raunchy improv puppet comedy show.

“Puppet Up! Uncensored,” which resumes starting Friday, has become one of the things that you have to do in Los Angeles. And TheWrap spoke to Brian Henson, chairman of the Jim Henson Company, about the origins and evolution of this one-of-a-kind show. According to Henson, the project started in the early 2000’s, when there was concern that the performers had become too “script-bound.”

“We hadn’t found a new tone of comedy, something fresh, something that wasn’t Muppets,” Henson said.

He was discussing the problem with his then-girlfriend, now-wife, actress Mia Sara, who introduced him to the world of improv comedy – something that he (and his father) had never experienced before. Henson went to a Groundlings show and became enchanted.

Sara introduced Henson to Patrick Bristow, “a very, very, very experienced improv director, trainer, and performer,” who was somewhat doubtful that improvisational comedy could work with puppets. “Because improvisers, rule number one is you’re watching each other’s eyes all the time and you’re trying to read each other’s minds almost so that you can have a fast comedic scene together where you’re almost reading each other’s minds,” Henson explained.

“We had this group of puppeteers, and Patrick and I and this group of puppeteers, we’d together one or two evenings a week, and it turned out really, really well,” Henson said. That eye contact issue that they were so worried about turned out to be a non-issue.

“Puppeteers, we can watch a monitor while we’re working in front of the camera and just watching the other puppets, we can read each other’s minds, even though you’re just watching somebody else’s puppet,” Henson said. “And the material was getting really funny what we were coming up with, and it was like, ‘Oh, this is great.’”

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The workshop sessions were initially just for friends and family. Until a producer for the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival invited Henson and his puppeteers to perform at the festival in Aspen, Colorado, in 2006.

“The very first public performances, I think were called the Jim Henson Company’s Experimental Improv Puppetry Show,” Henson said. At the time he thought it was a one-off show. “We’re just going to do Aspen and then we’re going to come back because we make TV shows. We’re not in theater, we’re not in live entertainment,” Henson remembered thinking.

Of course, while at Aspen they were approached by another festival – the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now they had a show. And they needed a better name. Puppet Up! Uncensored was born.

“The term Puppet Up! is a term that we’ve always used on Muppet sets over the years. It’s the last thing that the first AD says before the director calls action. Because holding up a puppet is heavy, so what would happen is the first AD would call out, ‘Roll sound.’ Sound would say ‘Rolling.’ Then the first AD would call turnover, and then the cameras would start rolling, and then the first AD would call, ‘Puppet Up,’ and then hand over to the director and the director would call to action,” Henson explained. “Puppet Up is this term that we’ve used all the time in our company.”

The show itself, Henson explains, is the best of both worlds – the puppets are being filmed and broadcast on two large screens that flank the stage, which is a similar-ish set up to all of the productions that actually feature Henson puppets.

“But at the same time, it’s really delight delightfully funny improv show. You take suggestions from the audience of what the content of the next scene will be or the location,” Henson said. “And often those suggestions err on the adult side and don’t want to have kids there.”

Hence the show’s full title – Puppet Up! Uncensored.

“I say to people that the comedy is that fresh flowing comedy of when you’re having a dinner party with really old friends where nobody’s worried about offending each other and you’re just telling bawdy stories to each other. I mean, that’s not the content, but that’s sort of the level of adultness,” Henson said.

As the show has continued throughout the years, it has remained a testing ground for the company’s performers.

“We train puppeteers for Puppet Up! and if they can make it on stage, then they become eligible for auditioning for roles for our various shows,” Henson said. “Because now this whole process of training, it makes for a very good puppeteer who also now has that magical, innate ability that they’ve been taught to ad lib.”

The live experience has also informed other projects, like Henson’s 2018 feature “The Happytime Murders” (and the honestly unbelievable live experience that accompanied it). “People said, ‘Oh maybe you should look for something that’s R-rated, that we can capture this tone,’” Henson said, pointing to other projects that the studio produced, including unscripted show “No, You Shut Up” and the dearly departed, deeply brilliant talk show “Earth to Ned” (which streamed on Disney+ until it got zapped by the Disney+ content purge death ray). “We’re using that talent to improvise much more in our productions, but also really that talented ad lib and improvise makes for a much better comedic performer.”

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Of course the other amazing aspect of Puppet Up! Uncensored is that you get to watch it on the Henson lot. While they have performed the show all over – in Las Vegas, New York even a Halloween version at Knott’s Berry Farm in Anaheim – it was important that they had a permanent home in Los Angeles. Finally they struck on an ingenious idea – just do it on the lot.

“We decided to do it on the Henson lot and that turned out to just be just the perfect location for the show,” Henson said. It was the lot that Charlie Chaplin built in 1917. “It’s one of the most wonderful studio lots in Los Angeles and it’s completely secure. Nobody’s ever allowed on the lot,” Henson said. “Being able to do these Puppet Up! shows on the lot means it’s like we open the gates to the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory.”

In addition to the standard tour, you can buy a VIP package that includes a 40-minute walking tour of the lot where you “learn about the lot before the show.” What could have been just a fun show, when it moved to the Henson lot, because an absolutely essential part of the Los Angeles cultural fabric.

And while the show is decidedly not Muppets-related (those characters were sold to Disney in 2004), those who know about the history of the Henson company will still be delighted. “We do reenactments of really old pieces that my dad developed. All the way back that he performed with my mother when he was 20, and another one that he performed with Frank Oz. And we now have five of those that we rotate through the show. There are 10 performances in July, and you’ll see at least one of those, probably two of those in each show,” Henson said.

Perfect for a show that celebrates the history of the company while boldly promoting new ideas by embracing the beautiful chaos established by Jim Henson all those years ago.

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