When Skyline College decided to produce “Avenue Q” for our Spring 2014 Musical, I knew that I would have to build puppets. And not the large, articulated, cable controlled puppets that I maintained from Michael Curry Studios when I worked for Disney. Rather, I would have to build puppets sewn from fleece and stretched over reticulated foam. The kind you would find in an episode of the “Muppet Show” or more appropriately “Sesame Street”. This was a challenge, but one that I looked forward to enthusiastically, as I have always been a fan of Jim Henson Studios, and the creations that came from their shops. The eventual puppets that we used for the show would be rented from Swazzle, but in order to keep the budget low and save on production costs, I would create the “rehearsal puppets” that would then wind up becoming the puppet “extras” in the show. Allowing us to only require the principal puppet package from the puppet rental company and only during the last two weeks of production. I was pleased to hear the students “complaining” when the actual show puppets arrived two weeks before run of show, and they didn’t like the way their puppets “handled”. Overall, it was a wonderful experience for the students to learn how to design, create, and then finally, breath life into their own puppet creations. Just for fun, I decided to model four of the puppets to resemble the four directors of the show… vocal, music, dance, and of course… their Technical Director (see above photo).