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The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.
Brian Henson
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Brian Henson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 3
Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Puppeteer
Screenwriter
Television Director
Television Producer
New York City
New York
Brian David Henson
Wells
Completely
Well
Huge
Mind
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Open
Improvising
Clear
Paying
Attention
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Meant
More quotes by Brian Henson
It's actually good when the performers are nervous, because it kind of sharpens up your brain and a little bit of adrenaline is good. Initially it's really tough.
Brian Henson
It's really great to do one piece, I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face, my dad developed in 1956, when he was 20 years old, and it's great to do that piece again now and see that it still really works as well as it ever did.
Brian Henson
So that's the challenge, you have a big technical aspect of what you're doing whilst you're creatively trying to improvise.
Brian Henson
You get used to it, you look forward to the adrenaline of the stage fright before you go out.
Brian Henson
I try to emulate his approach of really get the most out of people by allowing them to experiment and certainly allowing people to make mistakes.
Brian Henson
And it was a whole lot of fun, and in many ways, what we've done with the show is just taken that part of my early memories of visiting my dad, shooting with the Muppets, and taking that and making a show that's really an expansion of that and presenting a show that's all that.
Brian Henson
We're also irreverent, we have an irreverent attitude towards puppets, as well. So a lot of what we do is we're kind of making fun of the puppets for being puppets, even while we're doing it. And again, that all feeds into the absurdity of this show.
Brian Henson
This is certainly the raunchiest, if you use that word, raunchy. The roots of Jim Henson, though, was adult comedy.
Brian Henson
We try to keep it a classy show, but it certainly is blue at times. And it all depends on the audience, sometimes we've have audiences that don't really want us to go too far in that direction.
Brian Henson
And then after the success at Melbourne Comedy Festival, then we regrouped back in LA and we went back into workshopping and decided to develop a proper show and that's when we started working on Stuffed and Unstrung, which is a much bigger and sharper version of Puppet Up.
Brian Henson
And one of the funnest things was watching what they did before the director called action and after the director called cut. And they'd keep their hands in the puppets, they'd stay in character, and then they'd start goofing around with each other and be off of script, and it would get quite blue.
Brian Henson
I think in a creative effort, in any creative effort, you need to, people need to be able to be taking risks and if it turns out to be a mistake, if it turns out not to have been the right choice, that should be applauded, you know, by everybody, and it will come up with another plan.
Brian Henson
And my dad's answer would be usually something to the affect of, A, it came out better than he imagined, but also, he said, No, it would be impossible for me to imagine the way it will come out. He said, Yes, I story-boarded it, I had a plan, but then I work with an army of great artists and I want all of them to create inside that creation.
Brian Henson
But initially when I was working with my dad, it was in special effects puppets with radio control and motors and puppet effects.
Brian Henson
I was already sort of mixing my science physics enthusiasm with entertainment and directing and puppetry.
Brian Henson
We took a show to the Aspen Comedy Festival, called Puppet Up at that point, and in Aspen we just did three shows, and in Aspen, there was a producer from the Edinborough Fringe Festival, who said, Please come to Edinborough.
Brian Henson
And it should be something that only that group of people could've made with everybody invested.
Brian Henson
We kind of lost a lot of that and puppeteers were sticking to the script and we thought everything needed to get a lot funnier, so we thought we would go to a good improv comedy instructor.
Brian Henson
So while you're trying to improvise, you're also trying to puppeteer, you're doing everything that you need to do to perform a puppet in our style, for a camera.
Brian Henson
Patrick thought we should try to put an audience in front of one of the workshops, basically in front of the class and see how the performers rose to having an audience there, because he said, You know, it's a really interesting test, because sometimes it gets even funnier.
Brian Henson