Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545257
14 PROP CULTURE I SUMMER 2026 Props for Puppetry P rops made for puppetry are full of tricks, rigs, and construction puzzles that hopefully will be invisible to the viewer. If it is all done correctly, audiences are not thinking about how any of it works. They are watching characters tell stories. When it works, a banjo-playing frog in the middle of a swamp can make us all cry without anyone stopping to wonder how the banjo was built. I was reminded of that kind of invisible magic recently when my old friend and mentor, Fred Buchholz, came to visit. We first met on Muppets Tonight, where he pulled me out of the pool of production PAs and into the Muppet Workshop to help build props. Sitting together, we found ourselves talking about the specific challenges of building for puppets, and how different those challenges are from working with human actors. Fred has spent decades shaping that world through his work on The Muppets, Sesame Street, as well as many other hugely popular children's properties. I have also worked extensively with marionettes and hand puppets, along with a sizable Muppet resume of my own. Propping for puppets is something unlike any other form of props, creating unique complications for even the most ordinary of objects. Those challenges are what make the work so rewarding, especially when you can engineer a prop that plays like close-up magic without drawing attention to itself. That unique art requires an innate understanding of the puppets your props must interact with. That work begins with the puppet's hands. The styles and types of puppets vary widely. As such, the design and construction of puppet props depend largely on the type of puppet you are working with. Keep in mind, you may have multiple types of puppets in a single production. Live-hand puppets have the puppeteer's hands inside the puppet's hands. BY Brad Elliott, PMG Usually there is a sleeve at the elbow where the puppeteer enters the arm, their hand becoming the puppet's hand. Fozzie Bear and Cookie Monster are well-known examples. Walkaround puppets such as Big Bird and Sweetums also have a performer's hand in one of the character's arms. Live hands, as we call this style, let the performer grab and hold props, though it can still be tricky since the puppeteer works high above their head in something like an awkward three-fingered mitten. Rod-handed puppets usually have much smaller hands and generally lack any articulation. These hands are performed via a thin arm rod that most often joins to the hand from below the frame at the wrist. This gives the performer the ability to move the hand and wrist which, in turn, informs the motion of the whole arm like Kermit the Frog and Elmo. Oftentimes these arm rods are painted out in post. Rodded hands allow for designs smaller than a human hand but raise real issues if a character needs to handle props requiring dexterity or strength. Marionettes' hands are usually at the base of a long string controlling the hand and or arm, offering the least flexibility in prop design and performance. Have you ever tried holding a coffee cup over your head at a full-arm extension? It gets heavy fast. As someone coming up with props for puppets, weight is always your enemy. Live-hand puppets can handle weight better than most other types of puppets but often work with these props directly over their heads. There is usually a second puppeteer