An Insight into Puppetry for Kids TV - Buxton Puppet Festival : 2011

Marcus Clarke

&
Hands up Productions Limited

Presents

Marcus Clarke
is
The Puppet Maker

An Adult Stand up Comedy Act with Puppets.

Developed and Performed at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Contact here

About The Puppet Maker Show A Live half hour quirky mix of Novelty, Puppetry, Stand up Comedy and Cod Ventriloquism.

The plan was to develop and experiment with an Adult Stand Up Comedy Act and Show featuring Puppets, incorporating various adult Puppet Comedy ideas I had been developing. It was to be provisionally entitled, Marcus Clarke is 'The Puppet Maker'. It would be a Show that would develop what Adult Comedy writing, performing and producing talents I had.

Pre - Production.
Being for want of a better description a Novelty Act the running time I felt had to be no more than a half hour.
Most Stand up Comedy Acts are at least an hour. And the Show once written had to be developed and honed before a real audience. Half a dozen Puppet characters seemed about right with a mix of Audience Interaction, Story and Gag led comedy material combined with some Novelty and Cod Ventriloquism.
Cod Ventriloquism is that done deliberately very badly for wholly comedy effect.

Cat just tells a few simple Gaggs. Click his picture right to see how.

Venue
The Free festival The Laughing Horse at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival was decided upon with a Half hour slot and all booked and arranged in February 2007 along with the associated advertising.

Production
First performance 6.10pm on 4th August at 'Berlin' a nightclub and new Fringe Venue started off a pattern that repeated itself over the next 3 weeks and 19 performances. I performed the Act, always testing out new things and with each Show I gained in confidence, getting ever better at dealing with my stage fright and improving my comedy timings. The Act was then re-written starting every evening after the show then re-learnt the next day and performed again that evening. I wrote quite a few new short or one liner jokes on the fly which I was able to put straight in to the Act and test out. Most had a strong visual element as in this early example delivered by Cheesy Puppet.

Cheesy Joke

Outcome
Creating this Show in this way, has been both one of the hardest things I've ever done and one of the most rewarding.
Throughout all of the Shows I performed my audiences laughed and reacted with great generosity. They applauded well and always commented on the Show favorably afterwards to me. I enjoyed creating the Show and performing it for them and I learnt a great deal about Comedy too.
By the last week I think I had a rock steady and very funny Adult Comedy Stand up Show featuring Puppets. Which is what I had set out to achieve.
What I learnt from doing this will definitely inform positively all of my future Adult Comedy TV writing, production and development work and some solid Media Products resulted directly from it.

Recommended ?
I would do it again and recommend putting together a 'Stand Up Show' to anyone serious about Writing, Performing and Producing Adult Comedy in Film, Television, Games or Interactive Media. But its not suited to everyone and really not for the faint hearted.

Funding I self funded which put me back a bit I can tell you.