Walk Like A Christian

The puppeteers of Stuff-N-Foam perform at a Church fund-raiser in April, 2008.

I haven't featured any Christian puppetry here on PuppetVision for quite awhile, so what the heck...here's a video of a group called Stuff-N-Foam lip syncing to Walk Like a Christian. Excessive hair twirling notwithstanding, it's not bad.

And how can you not love a group that calls itself Stuff-N-Foam?

Franky and Mr. Scott

Franky and Mr. Scott is a series of Christian videos for children on YouTube.

I don't know why, but as I was watching this Christian puppet video about jealousy I kept waiting for the "Matthew" they refer to turn out to be the book of Mathew, but instead it ends with a slightly less predictable twist. The video is from a relatively new kids' Christian series called Franky and Mr. Scott that's being produced by a Deacon in Colerado named Frank Rodriguez and one of his fellow church members, Scott Phillips.

Jellytelly Prepares To Launch

JellyTelly is a new "Christian entertainment platform" for kids from the creator of Veggietales.

Phil Vischer - the creator of the popular Children animated series Veggietales and the Jelly News puppet podcast - has been working on a new project called JellyTelly. Phil is hoping JellyTelly can become a 21st century platform for Christian entertainment for kids, sort of a religious alternative to Nickelodeon or Disney Channel.

Phil is planning a mixture of live action and animated fare for the site, including a fair bit of puppetry. Considering his phenomenal track record as a writer, producer, animator, and puppeteer, this might just reshape the face of Christian puppetry. Only time will tell; JellyTelly is scheduled to launch later this Fall, but a preview is available to launch online at www.jellytelly.com.

Douglas Talks About Stuff

Douglas Talks About Stuff is a simple, but very nice example of Christian puppetry done right.

There is a tendency in the puppetry community to ghettoize Christian puppetry, largely due to its perceived lack of artistic merit. I'm guilty of having poked fun at this particular puppetry niche in the past (to be fair though, this is hideously bad) but I also think Christian puppetry has enormous potential.

J.J. Graves - a student at Nebraska Christian College (see previous post) - has a puppet video on GodTube right now that I think is a nice example of puppet ministry done right. It does a great job of explaining a simple human truth by telling an interesting story with a well performed character. Maybe more videos like this, Stations of the Cross and Who Am I? are going to start to change the public perception of Christian puppetry.

Who Am I Casting Crowns: Good Christian Puppetry

Who Am I Casting Crowns is an impressive example of Christian puppetry from Norway.

Who Am I Casting Crowns performed by a United Pentecostal Church youth group from Oslo, Norway is a really nice example of Christian puppetry and how to use black light effectively. It's been viewed over 2 million times, which has got to make it one of the most popular puppetry videos on YouTube ever. A higher resolution video that includes a five minute introduction here.

Thanks to Amy Beth for pointing this out!

Neat Looking Black Light Puppet

Video of this neat-looking black light puppet was recorded at a Christian puppetry festival last weekend.

This is a short video of a neat black light puppet being performed by a Christian puppet team at a festival in Huntsville, AL last weekend.

Link via Squonk.

Tales from the Bayou

Puppetry Lab's Amy Harder (on the lower left above) recently worked on the Christian series Believer's Bayou.

Amy Harder has been working on a Christian kids’ series called Believer’s Bayou and shares some stories from the puppetry trenches over at Puppetry Lab. I thought it was a particularly interesting blog post because in it Amy discusses some of the challenges of working on a less-than-ideal puppet shoot, including dealing with sets that aren't raised (or "platformed up") and lip syncing to pre-recorded tracks. Amy's also included some behind-the-scenes pics from the shoot as well.

Some Really Good Christian Puppetry

Stations of the Cross is a beautiful and simple example of really effective Christian puppetry.

I've been fairly critical of the quality of Christian puppetry in the past, so I always feel obligated to point out the good stuff when I come across it and Stations of the Cross is pretty darn good. The music is excellent, the shadow puppets and staging are excellent and the manipulation is simple (minimalist even) but effective. The whole thing testifies to the power of the silhouette.

Stations of the Cross was created by a Jesuit named Edward Sheehy in New Jersey and I think that a lot of churches wishing to incorporate puppetry in to their worship and ministry could learn from what he's done. Something like this requires less money, materials and technical skill than the "Muppety" stuff that's so prevalent in Christian puppetry today and can also be much, much more effective.

Puppets on GodTube

Good Friday seems like an appropriate day to mention puppets on GodTube (link via TechCrunch), a new video sharing site dedicated to Christian audiences. There's only a few puppet videos posted so far and the quality is middle-of-the-road, but hopefully this site will provide an opportunity for the Christian puppetry community to showcase some really great work.

Someone please save Christian puppetry

Over at his Puppetminister Blog last week, Ben talked about the problem with Christian puppetry. Here's my favourite excerpt:

"...there is no excuse for sloppy manipulation. The concepts are simple and good execution takes practice. Am I the best in the world? No. Do I practice enough? No., but Jesus died for me, the least I can do is develop good puppetry skills..."

There's a long and proud connection between puppetry and religion, but most Christian puppetry isn't just bad, it's painful (check out this if you don't believe me). The talent and potential for artistic expression is out there...great puppeteers and builders like Dave Privett and Steve Axtell do a fantastic of combining puppet entertainment and Christian ministry and Ben himself wrote an ebook on the subject.

I think the real problem is an emphasis on ministry over artistry. Of course ministry is the first goal of Christian puppetry, but why can't there be top-notch artistry too? I don't mean to attack the well-intentioned, faithful people who simply put on puppet shows in Sunday School every week, but Christian puppeteers should challenge themselves to do better than the generic puppets and scripts that seem to dominate the genre.

That's what I think anyway.

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09/10/06 Update: Puppets and Coffee has chimed in on the subject of Christian puppetry and provides an interesting, albeit totally agnostic view on the issue. I don't completely agree with all of it, but it does provide a similar take on the "ministry over artistry" approach I mentioned above.

Scary Christian Alien Puppet

I admit to having a morbid, slightly mean-spirited fascination with really bad Christian puppetry and this creepy alien puppet on something called The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show is particularly painful to watch.

Call me crazy, but if you're going to do something in the name of God, shouldn't you go out of your way to do it especially well? I think someone with just a little bit of faith and talent could so become the Walt Disney of Christian puppetry without trying very hard (link via Mike).

Update: I knew I was going to get a few complaints over this one...and it's only 9:30 in the morning so far. For the benefit of the few people who wrote in a) I'm actually a Christian, not an atheist b) if someone can point me to some really well done Christian puppetry I'll happily share that with the world too and c) I appreciate the prayers for my immortal soul.