| Page 1 2 THE MAGIC STORE by Lisa Hood-Anklewicz "I believe in taking a positive attitude toward the world, my hope still is to leave the world a little bit better than when I got here." – Jim HensonIt has been fifteen years since Jim Henson passed away and I think it’s pretty safe to say that he got his wish. Jim was known for his gentle, quiet demeanour, which hid the true visionary that was the man within. As a high school student, Jim had aspirations of working in television, which is a much more remarkable dream than it may seem, given that it was the early 1950s and television was just getting off the ground. Puppeteering was simply a means to get his foot through the door in 1954. What that first short-lived and unpaid job would lead to is truly unbelievable in retrospect. Jim Henson touched so many lives - with age never being a barrier - that his death in May of 1990 has left many people with the memory of where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. In some ways, Jim was like the next generation’s John Lennon. The Internet is filled with letters from fans who are still writing today, trying to express what Jim meant in their lives. To some he was a teacher, a playmate, even a friend. For all of them, there is a gap in their lives where Jim is supposed to be. Even my own high school yearbook states that my greatest ambition was to work with Jim Henson, despite the fact that the yearbook was published six years after he was gone. It was fifty years ago that this all started, with a five minute twice-daily show called Sam and Friends which aired on a local television channel in Maryland. The show featured Jim and fellow college student Jane Nebel (later to be Jane Henson) and four puppets, one of which was named Kermit. It would lead to guest spots on other shows including Today and The Steve Allen Show. The 1960s gave birth to Rowlf the Dog, who would become the first nationally known Muppet due to regular appearances on The Jimmy Dean Show for three years. Commercial spots for countless companies were produced and by the end of the decade Henson and public television producer Joan Ganz Cooney saw three years of work finally become Sesame Street. A legacy had begun and so much was to follow: The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, Storytellers and numerous feature film ventures.  However, what makes the work of Jim Henson special, and so truly unbelievable is what happened behind the Muppets. Jim was a man who had visions of many worlds in his head, and they needed a way to get out, to be shown, explored, and to have their stories told. The Muppets and Henson’s unique art of puppeteering began as the channel for these stories, but as the stories and their subsequent worlds became more elaborate and fantastical, Jim had to develop new ways to express them.The Muppets revolutionized the world of puppets and puppeteering. The craft even earned its own name of ’’muppeteering’’. The craft of the creation of The Muppets and other Henson creatures was something that could be put under a broadcast camera at close range and scrutinized. Each character seemed real, with ranges of movement and facial expressions. Jim conceived, crafted and performed the original Muppet characters, and it would be Jim who would assemble a family of creators and performers that would eventually make up The Creature Shop. At its very basic definition, The Creature Shop is the offices and workshops where all Henson characters were manufactured. Jim believed in the philosophy that by keeping groups of people together, like a family, the work that they all would do could only benefit. Being hired for a Henson production was more likely to turn into a full-time work experience than merely a small addition to your resume. All of the designers, artists, crafters, and builders at The Creature Shop were part of the extended Henson family. No one worked with a contract and it seemed they didn’t have to. All they needed was to catch the excitement and delight that Jim himself had for the projects they worked on and the problems they were presented with. Early on it was The Muppet Show that found its way off the workshop floors and onto the screen, but The Creature Shop quickly became a place for the advancement of technologies. When The Creature Shop completed a character called Yoda, those working with the Henson team came to realize that they were working with much more than puppets. The ability to have each Muppet create unique emotional facial expressions at the control of the puppeteer was made possible by the drive and innovation of the creative team at The Creature Shop. In the case of Yoda, the story goes that it leaked to the workshop that the work that went into Yoda would be classified as "make-up" in the film credits, and that didn't sit quite right. The work that went into Yoda was much more than rubber latex and common puppetry. The Creature Shop was pioneering a new field of technology in the film and television industries and Yoda’s “make-up” classification was what made them realize that they were working with a new discipline and that it needed a name: Animatronics.  The Dark Crystal (1982) became the true stepping-off point for The Creature Shop’s development of Animatronics. Jim had been working on the idea of The Dark Crystal for five years before it was released, and even for someone like Jim it was a highly ambitious project from the beginning: a complete living fantasy world explored as a feature film with absolutely no human characters. It would be a combination of puppetry, performing, and very early animatronics techniques that would bring life to The Dark Crystal. A well-choreographed team of muppeteers was often needed to bring a single character to life. For example, a Skeksis, one of the large reptile-like villains, required a performer to be hunched over a television monitor inside the costume, controlling the head and beak, while three puppeteers followed behind to control the eyes and mouths of the creatures with a joystick-like contraption rigged to the costume.The Creature Shop would see many more projects come through its doors over the next decade. Feature films such as Dreamchild (1985), Labyrinth (1986), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) would each allow the creature shop to advance the animatronics field, however they never strayed too far from what they seemed to perfect in The Dark Crystal: the combination of performer, puppeteer and Animatronics in every costume. The soft spot Jim seemed to keep in is heart for puppeteering is obvious in The Jim Henson Foundation. The foundation in short is a means to keep the development of puppetry and puppet theatre alive in the United States. Jim created the foundation himself in 1982 and since then more than 179 American puppet artists have been awarded nearly 350 grants in order to continue their work. It is the only grant-making institution to promote puppetry in the United States. Past recipients include Julie Taymor, who would go on to direct the Broadway production of The Lion King. Jim was simply fascinated by the range of what puppetry could do, and the foresight of The Jim Henson Foundation is another way in which he continues to contribute to the world, from behind the scenes, long after he has gone. Page 1 2 |  |
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