Puppet Up! pairs Brian Henson’s creations with improv comedy stars
Brian Henson got into the family business early. He appears as a toddler in his father Jim Henson’s film Wheels That Go, created for the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal. A couple of years later his dad created Sesame Street and revolutionized TV for children. Brian went on to appear in that show and was soon building puppets. Today, he is chairman of the Jim Henson Company, and his film credits include not only the Muppet features, but iconic puppet performances in Little Shop of Horrors, Labyrinth and Return to Oz.
In 2000, the Jim Henson Company purchased the historic Charlie Chaplin studios on La Brea. “When we heard that the Chaplin lot was for sale, we had to have it,” Henson said at the time. “It’s the perfect home for the Muppets and our particular brand of classy, but eccentric entertainment. When people walk onto our lot, they fall in love with Hollywood again.”
Puppet Up! at the Montalbán Theatre in HollywoodCredit: Photo by Omar Gaieck
Five years later, Brian began inviting audiences onto the historic lot to see an entirely new type of show he developed with actor and director Patrick Bristow, an alum of The Groundlings improv troupe. Puppet Up! was soon cracking up audiences at The Improv before traveling to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and comedy shows around the world.
Puppet Up! is at the Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood through August 9th, bringing the frenetic, absurd improv puppet show to the same historic stage where Helen Hayes and Josephine Baker once performed. Audience members shout out suggestions and the talented improv artists race over to a case filled with dozens of original Henson creations, and cast the show, then create the entire skit live, while simultaneously broadcasting it on a giant screen. The audience went bonkers when original sketches developed by Jim and Jane Henson in the 1950s and 60s were performed live onstage. Brian Henson himself joined the troupe for a few numbers and brought down the house. This is the closest most people will get to being inside the Henson universe, and that brought the audience together. We overheard several conversations about the love for these creations made of fuzz and felt.
Patrick Bristow at Puppet Up!Credit: Photo by Omar Gaieck
“Because it’s puppets and it’s uncensored, the audience is definitely more uncensored themselves,” Bristow said in a statement. “Regarding a lot of the risqué or the edgier humor that happens, the puppets get away with much more. The puppets, by virtue of just being these rascals — and it being heightened and one or two degrees away from reality — they get away with murder – literally.”
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Puppet Up!
The Ricardo Montalbán Theatre
1615 Vine St, Hollywood
Through August 9, 2026