The Muppets

The Muppets are a group of puppets and costume characters, and the company created by Jim Henson. Individually, a Muppet is properly any one of the puppets built by the Jim Henson Workshop. Though the term is often used erroneously to refer to any puppet that resembles the distinctive style of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street characters, the term is both an informal name and legal trademark linked to the characters created by The Jim Henson Company. The Muppets are now owned by The Walt Disney Company.

Operation

The puppeteer typically holds the puppet above his head or in front of his body, and operates the hands and arms with a Y-shaped control rod. One consequence of this design is that most Muppets are left handed as the puppeteer uses his right hand to operate the head while operating the arm rod with his left hand. There are many other common designs and means of operation. In advanced puppets, several puppeteers may control a single character; the performer who controls the mouth usually provides the voice for the character. As technology has evolved, the Jim Henson team and other puppeteers have developed an enormous variety of means to operate puppets for film and television, including the use of suspended rigs, internal motors, remote radio control, and computer enhanced and superimposed images. Creative use of a mix of technologies has allowed for scenes in which Muppets appear to be riding a bicycle, rowing a boat, and even dancing onstage with no puppeteer in sight.

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