The rock star puppets of the Mudgarden Experience – created by Annett Mateo, props artisan at Seattle Children’s Theater – perform in a gallery at the center of the exhibit. The band is an EMP|SFM supplement to the exhibit.
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IF YOU GO
Where: Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, 325 Fifth Ave. N., Seattle
When: May 23 to Aug. 16, 2009
Cost: Adults $15; kids 5 to 17, students and military with ID, seniors $12; kids under 4 free.
A Mom and Dad’s Review: “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World”
By Sean and Elizabeth Gillespie
“Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” is not about the Muppets. Nor is it about Sesame Street or The Dark Crystal. Not really, anyway.
Rather than focusing much on all of the titles and fuzzy hand-held characters that made Henson famous, the traveling Smithsonian exhibit that is making its West Coast debut at the Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is more about how he created his characters and the professional path that led him there.
You won’t see anything in detail about Cookie Monster’s “personality” or core character traits (i.e. eating disorder and wretched grammar). But you will read about how he originated in a television commercial in 1966 as a snack-food huckster named Wheel Stealer, who had teeth and green fur. You’ll learn that it wasn’t until 1969, when he joined Sesame Street, that he turned blue and his teeth fell out. And you’ll see the original notepad sketches that spawned the stealer/monster.
The exhibit gives you less of what you already know about the man and his team (that’s what DVD box sets are for) and more about what you probably don’t: their earlier work developing puppet characters for TV commercials, a few of which are played on a monitor; their nonpuppet socially conscious movies in the 1960s; and how all along the way, they were refining those skills of puppetry and humor that eventually made you care about Henson in the first place.
If you don't already know Henson's work, then this probably isn't the place to get acquainted. Especially if you're, say, 2 years old and you don't stand still for 30 seconds straight – like our daughter, Sylvia.
We rented The Muppet Movie before taking her, hoping it would be enough of a primer to make the exhibit a fun, up-close encounter with Kermit, Miss Piggy and other Henson creations in addition to Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and the Sesame Street characters she knows from some of her favorite books.
Things were looking good as soon as she spotted the display case in the lobby. “Big Bird!!! … Grover!!! … Miss Piggy!!! … Open this … open this,” Sylvia said as she tried to figure out how to pry open a locked glass case.
She looked equally awed at the sight of Kermit the Frog sitting on a log just inside the doors to the exhibit, then made a B-line to the nearby Mudgarden Experience gallery, where three rocker puppets – one of them with Kurt Cobain’s grunge attire and mop of dirty blonde hair – were singing Moving Right Along, Can You Picture That? and other songs that Kermit, Fozzy the Bear or The Electric Mayhem sang on The Muppet Show . (The band is a special addition for the exhibit’s Seattle stop.)
Once the song was over and the museum staffers who were making the puppets sing stood up, they invited the kids back to take a turn in the puppet booth. She got a Grover puppet, but even while standing on a stool for little kids, she wasn’t quite tall enough to give her little blue man an actual spot on the stage. She didn’t seem to mind, though.
Then off she went … running toward a display case with a life-sized Rowlf, the piano-playing Muppet dog. That’s about where her attention span ran out. Aside from a few brief stops at some of the other features – a low table with several books on it (most of which seemed better suited for grown-up Henson fans than kids), a black-and-white video of Kermit and Rowlf – she spent the rest of our hour-long visit running from room to room, often in the adjoining Science Fiction Museum wing, squealing as she tried to find places to hide from us.
In one last bid to draw her attention back to the Muppets, we took her back to Kermit the Frog and shared a fun factoid: that the original Kermit was made from one of Henson’s mom’s spring coats and a ping pong ball. But she was off to the races again before we could explain what a ping pong ball was.
All in all, the exhibit seems best suited for kids who have watched or read enough Sesame Street or The Muppet Show to have become true fans of Henson’s creations. Otherwise, middle-aged fans like us would probably be better off checking out the exhibit without a little one to chase around.
Elizabeth M. Gillespie is managing editor of Seattle’s Child. Her husband, Sean is an attorney, and longtime Henson fan whose favorite Muppet is Fozzy Bear (and sometimes Kermit the Frog).
