What did Jim Henson contribute to theater arts?
He a) popularised using foam to make puppets with. Foam wasn’t a traditional material to use for puppets (duh!) in most countries; now pretty much everyone uses it. Although many puppet makers were using foam around the time, his fame boosted the popularity of the material b) popularised puppets to an adult audience. The Henson Co. specifically does a lot of adult work, including Farscape, a sci fi TV show c) developed a lot of methods and puppets for the ‘animatronics’, like in The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, etc d) used a lot of simple puppetry design aspects that are industry-standards today. For instance, there is the ‘triangle’ design for adding eyes and noses to get the puppet’s facial expression just so, so that the puppet actually appears to look directly at the camera. There are a number of design elements about Bert and Ernie, etc. that many puppet makers look to for inspiration and how to make the puppet visually interesting on a number of subtle levels. …. I’m sure there’s m
