How can I get my puppet company page listed? We are no longer listing individual performance companies, puppet builders or puppet theaters. There are other places on the web that individual companies can be listed. UNIMA-USA has a listing for individuals and companies who have paid the UNIMA-USA membership fee. Takey's website is an extraordinary listing of puppet companies and puppeteers who have web pages. We will list pages that contain information about puppetry that would be useful to other puppeteers or aspiring puppeteers. We will soon have a submission page that will allow you to submit a link for us to review to see if it fits into our page focus.

Can I link to the Puppetry Home Page? Please do! Use http://puppetry.info/puppetry/ as the URL. You can also use this logo:

Where can I find puppet patterns? Check out the Puppet Building section. It lists companies that have puppet patterns. The Puppeteers of America Puppetry Store also has many books with patterns.

I have a puppet and I'm trying to find out more information about it. People are finding ebay, the auction website, to be a good place to start researching a puppet. Go to ebay and see if there are any other puppets like it being auctioned off. (Ebay has a TON of puppet listings.) You can also try one of the puppetry forums listed on the Other Puppetry Sites and Resources page.

Are Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie named for Bert the cop and Ernie the cabdriver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life"? Jerry Juhl, head writer for the Muppets for many years responded to a statement in San Francisco Chronicle writer Jon Carroll's column that Bert and Ernie were named for Bert the cop and Ernie the cabdriver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." Jerry Juhl writes:   I was the head writer for the Muppets for 36 years and one of the original writers on "Sesame Street." The rumor about "It's a Wonderful Life" has persisted over the years. I was not present at the naming, but I was always positive it was incorrect. Despite his many talents, Jim had no memory for details like this. He knew the movie, of course, but would not have remembered the cop and the cabdriver. I was not able to confirm this with Jim before he died, but shortly thereafter I spoke to Jon Stone, Sesame Street's first producer and head writer and a man largely responsible for the show's format. (Jon, sadly, is no longer with us either.) He assured me that Ernie and Bert were named one day when he and Jim were studying the prototype puppets. They decided that one of them looked like an Ernie, and the other one looked like a Bert. The movie character names are purely coincidental. Do I get bonus points for this?: Oscar the Grouch got his name from a seafood restaurant called Oscar's on Lexington Avenue in NYC. Jim and Jon had lunch there once and had a really bad-tempered waiter.

Any idea where I can get a punching nun or devil or rabbi or alien puppet? I'm getting this question a lot these days. The only place I know of is the one and only Archie McPhee's, the gloriously goofy mail order store in Seattle. Do a search on "punch" to see their entire collection, including my favorite, the pumpkin head in a nightgown. You can order them online. If anyone knows where else to get these, let me know.

Where can I find puppet scripts? Check out the Using Puppetry section. It has a section devoted to scripts. You might also want to check out the Puppetry Books section, which lists some books devoted to puppetry scripts. The Puppeteers of America Puppetry Store is an excellent resource for books with puppet scripts.

Where can I find puppet stages or plans to build a puppet stage? There are some stage links in the Using Puppetry section.The best resource is Links to puppet stages and theatres by Alan Firminger. The Puppeteers of America Puppetry Store also has a few stage building books.

I have a question about puppetry and can't find the answer on your page. What should I do? If you have a question and cannot find the answer on the page, post your question to PUPTCRIT, which is the puppetry mailing list or to the puppetry newsgroup, rec.arts.puppetry. The Yahoo Marionette Group is also a good forum if you have a marionette question. These forums are chock-full of real live puppeteers who will eagerly share their wisdom, make recommendations, point you in the right direction and encourage your efforts. Your local library may have books on puppets or reference material, such as encyclopedias, that will have information on puppetry. Or, join one of these puppetry organizations, where you can find an interesting assortment of people willing to lend a hand. But, try asking PUPTCRIT, rec.arts.puppetry or the Yahoo Marionette Group when you have questions that you can't resolve with your own research. These forums are extraordinary resources, and I urge you to take advantage of them.

How can I become a professional puppeteer? If you asked 20 different professional puppeteers how they became professional puppeteers, you would get at least 30 wildly different answers. My best suggestion to you is to start hanging around PUPTCRIT, rec.arts.puppetry and the Yahoo Marionette Group , soak up the local culture, and ask individuals who you respect in those forums for their opinions. And look for a puppetry organization in your area where you can meet local professionals who might be willing to share their experiences with you.

I'm trying to locate a certain puppeteer, or I'm trying to locate some resources about puppetry. Can you help? While I sometimes may be able to steer you in the right direction, let me repeat my mantra: your best bet is to ask PUPTCRIT, rec.arts.puppetry or the Yahoo Marionette Group. These forums have hundreds of readers and subscribers and the chances are good that someone there will be able to help.

I'm writing a paper and was wondering if you would send me some information on puppetry (or on marionettes or on the Muppets or on shadow puppets or on...). No, I will not. If you're writing a paper, do not send me an email requesting that I send you "some information". I am not here to do your research for you. I've gotten a disheartening number of "send me the history of puppetry and do it quick because I have a paper due" emails. It is especially discouraging because most of these emails have been from college students, and a good number of these "students" have gotten abusive when I have refused to provide them with a comprehensive outline on puppetry, ripe for plagiarizing. It's gotten to the point where I do not respond to people who ask me this question. While I have assembled links for you to visit, you need to expend some effort and do your own research. A good place to start would be the Puppetry Traditions page or the Puppetry Definitions page.

No, really, my library has nothing about puppetry, and I have a paper due. Would you please send me the history of puppetry? (This is my most frequently asked question.) No, I will not send you this information. Try looking on the Puppetry Definitions page for the history of puppetry. A number of people have commented that they find my refusal to email information to people writing papers to be "snotty". Before I put up this page, I got 10-40 emails a week from "students" demanding that I send them information for their papers. I got emails from people saying they didn't have time to look through the pages, so I needed to send them all the listings that pertained to their subject, and I needed to do it RIGHT NOW! I've gotten profane emails cursing me out because I didn't have an outline on the history of puppetry readily available. My favorite outrageous email was from the student who complained that their library was almost a mile away and they had no car, so I had a "moral obligation" to hurry and give them all the information they needed to write their puppetry paper that was due in 4 hours. When I refused, they responded with a profanity laden email. This email, by the way, got their email account terminated when I forwarded it to their Internet Service Provider (ISP). Other webmasters I've talked to have said that this is a common problem with running an informational page: you put in hours as a labor of love and some people will expect you to put in more unpaid time and become their personal research assistant. And I've been told that the abusive tone of some of these emails is also sadly common. What some people see as a "snotty" tone in this page, I see as firmly defining the boundaries of what I will and will not do. The majority of people I hear from are kind and delightful, and they are the ones I happily do this page for. But the Internet brings you into contact with all types of people, and for a certain type of person, you have to be firm. I know, of course, that YOU are certainly not that type of person, so I thank you for understanding my position. The best I can do to assist you with your research is provide you with links to visit about puppetry. And to remind you to ask PUPTCRIT, rec.arts.puppetry or the Yahoo Marionette Group when you have questions that you can't resolve with your own research. Rose Sage Barone, webmaster of The Puppetry Home Page

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