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Develop a Friend Puppet – Part 2

The last post I talked about developing a friend puppet. A friend puppet is simply one that interacts with the audience and emcee on a lighthearted level. We use a large dog puppet we named Mugwhump as our friend puppet. I’m the only one who works Mugwhump because we have developed a character and personality for him. I’m a quiet and reserved guy, but we wanted a different personality for Mugwhump. We wanted him to be outgoing, a little slow, fun loving, and a bit mischievous.

For your friend puppet, it is a good idea to think out ahead of time what type of personality you want him to have. What personality would help to loosen an audience up? Do you want him to be funny and witty, or do you want him to be the “straight man” and have the emcee be the funny or witty one?

Once you’ve determined what type of personality you want your friend puppet to have, begin to watch people with that same personality. Watch how they act, their mannerisms, what they say and how they say it so you can get a good idea in mind on what you want your puppet to do.

Then, either find someone with that personality type, or better yet find someone who has a different type of personality but can develop the one you want. I’m not very outgoing when in public, but open up a lot more to people I’m comfortable with. When I do Mugwhump, my wife is the one out front talking with him and since I can’t see the audience it is easier to open up. In fact, I’ve done Mugwhump for so long now, that all I have to do is put him on and his personality immediately comes out. 

Mugwhump’s personality developed over time. Take the time needed to develop the personality of your friend puppet. To do that, the same person should work the puppet all the time. That way the puppet’s voice and mannerisms will be consistent from one program to the next. If more than one person on your team wants to do a friend puppet, I’d suggest developing a separate puppet for each one and rotate them in your scheduling.

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