Whenyou think of the Muppets, you probably picture Big Bird, Miss Piggy, Bert and Ernie, and, of course, Kermit. But it’s likely you also think of the lanky, bearded non-puppet Jim Henson, the man behind the Muppets. After this weekend’s avalanche of puppets in Santa Barbara, you might start to think of another bearded figure, the PuppetPalooza festival’s producer and all-around impresario, Mitchell Kriegman. This tireless promoter of all things puppet brings several decades of experience in children’s television, comedy, theater, and young-adult novel writing to bear on what will be an unprecedented opportunity for Santa Barbarans to experience the full range of what’s happening in the world of puppets. From world-renowned popular children’s acts to the furthest-out avant-garde performers who work with such pop culture giants as Spike Jonze and Missy Elliott, all of the puppeteers who will appear this weekend have one thing in common — they are friends of Mitchell’s.
Talking to Kriegman about what he has planned, you’d think that every participant — from the festival production team to the foundations who backed it and the people at Paseo Nuevo who have given PuppetPalooza a home to the puppeteers and the puppets themselves — had an equal part in creating the project, but take it from the puppet’s mouth: Without Kriegman, this festival never would have happened.
PuppetPalooza’s sprawling, unpredictable shape directly reflects both Kriegman’s wide-ranging, highly eclectic personal taste and his relentlessly evolving, improvisational approach to organization and execution. For example, with 10 days to go, the details of the festival were seemingly fully in place. The schedule had gone to the printers, and it looked as though all the venues were a done deal. One week later, things had shifted, in some cases radically. With less than a week to go, a streak of cold weather combined with a forecast of rain for the festival weekend had turned things upside down.