Jersey-born puppeteer Andy Heath has worked on some of the biggest and best films and TV shows of the last few decades. He recently returned to Jersey to help the JADC prepare for their production of Avenue Q. TOM OGG reports
“SESAME Street – but with more sass and swearing”.
Such is the basic premise of Avenue Q, an award-winning musical-comedy that has performed to sell-out audiences on the West End and off-Broadway since it first premiered in 2003.
And Islanders will be able to see what all the fuzz… sorry, fuss is about when the Jersey Amateur Dramatics Club bring the all-singing, all-dancing, all-furry show to the Jersey Arts Centre stage later this month.
Held from Tuesday 14 to Saturday 18 October, Avenue Q promises audiences – or at least those aged 16 and over – an evening of laugh-out-loud comedy and catchy show tunes, and all performed by JADC members and a selection of Muppet-style handheld puppets.
Among those who have helped to bring the production to life is Andy Heath, a Jersey-born professional puppeteer whose CV reads like a showcase of every high-quality puppet-based production from the last three decades: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Harry Hill Movie, Mongrels, Muppets Most Wanted, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Yonderland.
For Avenue Q, Andy spent a weekend in Jersey and a full day with the JADC team and it was, he says, “absolutely amazingly good fun”.
“Oh, it was a total and utter joy,” says Andy, chatting from his London home earlier this week.
“I came home to Jersey, which, frankly, was amazing because the weather was just gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. And I spent a whole day with the JADC team, just going through some basic puppetry stuff with them: how to hold a puppet, how to make it look real when it moves and speaks, how to do lip-syncing, which is something many people take for granted but you’d be amazed how often they do it wrong. I find people always do the reverse of what they should, keeping the mouth of the puppet closed when they talk and then opening it when they’re not speaking. It was a lovely day – really, really good fun.”
Avenue Q breaks with convention by having the puppeteers appearing on stage alongside their puppets. Naturally, therefore, it helps if those taking part in the production have a flair for performing in front of an audience.
“Absolutely, yes,” says Andy. “Although, to be honest, I’d say that being skilled at performance is a requirement for puppetry in general, even when the puppeteers are out of sight.
“When I first started getting into puppetry, and I was interested in it right from being a kid, I used to watch the Muppet Show and Sesame Street and I would just be amazed at how alive they all seemed. And so whenever anyone asks me what is the main requirement for being a puppeteer, and I get asked this a lot, I always say acting. If you love puppetry, that’s great, and keep practising the technical side of it, the art of it. But, for heaven’s sake, do some acting classes as well. Because it will feed into everything you’re then doing with this [mimes operating a puppet]. I never used to value it, which was a mistake, but I certainly do today. If you’re interested in puppetry, go and join your local amateur dramatics club.”
For those who have never seen it, Avenue Q is sure to provide an awful lot of laughs, although anyone who is easily offended by swearwords or references to sex might want to bring a pair of earplugs with them to the Arts Centre.
“Yes, it is a little bit like an X-rated Sesame Street,” says Andy with a laugh.
“Avenue Q was actually conceived by a bunch of people who worked originally on Sesame Street but – how to put it? – they weren’t quite Sesame Street material. So they decided to leave and make a more adult-orientated show.”
Despite being such a prominent figure in the industry, Andy himself has never worked as a puppeteer on Avenue Q, for a number of reasons.
“Well, firstly I don’t think I have the world’s greatest singing voice,” he says. “I’d say I have a reasonably decent voice. I can get by – I was singing yesterday, in fact, doing some ADR [Automated Dialogue Replacement] in a studio in Brighton. But I only ever sing in the voice of a character. When you’re doing that, you can have fun with it.
“But to get on stage and sing in front of an audience, as is the case with the performers in Avenue Q? No, that’s not something I’d enjoy. I’m not a ‘belting it out on stage’ kinda guy. I don’t really like being seen. I’d much rather be hidden under a set with the puppet poking out above me. That’s just my preferred way of working.
“Having said that, I do enjoy doing workshops,” he continues. “I’ve got no issues with being on stage in front of people if I’m talking to them about puppetry and teaching them how it all works. I find that really easy because I’m talking about something that is a passion and which I love.
“But singing in front of an audience? Not for me.”
And he speaks from experience: “I did a live show once, it was just me and a monkey puppet on stage, with me wearing a black cap and a waistcoat. A friend of mine watched the show and afterwards he said: ‘Oh my God, you were grinning uncomfortably the entire time’. They told me I needed to relax. But I couldn’t relax because people could see me.”
As well as operating puppets, multi-talented Andy also designs, builds and even voices them.
“If you do the puppet then, more often than not, you do the voice,” he says. “It helps with syncing the lips, building the character, and so on. That is the norm, especially in children’s TV. Kermit the Frog, for instance, was operated by Frank Oz, and then Eric Jacobson, and they both voiced him.”
At present, Andy is among the puppeteers operating and voicing puppets for Dodge’s Pup School, a “really cute” BBC children’s TV show, which is now in its second series, and which has proven a huge hit with younger viewers.
“Dodge’s Pup School has been a really big deal [in the UK] for puppeteers,” he says. “We all went nuts when it was announced because often when you do children’s television, they will have a human presenter and then a token puppet. Or maybe two puppets. Perhaps once or twice a decade there will be a show where there are loads of puppets on screen at once – and that is the case with Dodge’s Pup School. It’s the first time the BBC has done this in a long time. I think there were about 12 to 15 of us in the studio every day operating the characters. And that never happens. It just honestly never happens. Maybe slightly more often in the US, but the UK? Once a decade, if you’re lucky.
“So I was very fortunate to be working on Dodge’s Pup School. And it’s a lovely show as well, which is nice. It’s a really gorgeous little kid’s show. Give it a watch.”
It was 1998 when Andy left Jersey to seek a career as a puppeteer in the UK, although he says he returns to the Island as and when work allows, typically two or three times a year.
“I only live about 15 minutes on the train from Gatwick and, once you get on the plane, you’re here in an hour. The weekend that I came back to Jersey for Avenue Q, I arrived and it was 23° – just glorious. I went swimming at Archirondel every morning at 7am. I’d wake up and think: “Right – don’t waste this trip”. It was so beautiful. I miss the Island so much.”
Among the A-list actors and comedians with whom Andy has worked is Ricky Gervais, who starred in the 2014 comedy film Muppets Most Wanted, and who Andy describes as “absolutely great”.
“Ricky spent all of his spare time off-camera sitting and chatting with the Muppets,” he laughs. “He was very much into it.”
A huge fan of Jim Henson since childhood (“Henson opened up a whole other world for puppetry”), Andy says his younger self would never have believed that he’d one day work with the legendary Muppets.
“Growing up in Jersey, I went to work in a bank because, well, that’s just what everyone told me I should do. It’s what everyone did. I was always passionate about puppetry, but it was only ever a hobby – I never thought I would actually be able to make a living doing it.”
Thankfully, a chance meeting with Spitting Image puppeteer Richard Coombs in the mid-1990s saw Andy leaving the world of finance behind.
“I spoke with him and told him how much I’d love to be a professional puppeteer,” he recalls. “From then on, he kept writing to me – this was in the days before computers – telling me I needed to apply for this and apply for that. He basically just nagged me until I did something about it.”
After moving to the UK, Andy began his puppetry career working on an ITV children’s show called Doctor Xargle.
“It was terrible – but it got me in with good people.”
Given the manner and speed at which AI is currently gaining a foothold in the entertainment industry, I suggest to Andy that professions such as puppetry – which can only ever be performed by actual living human beings – will likely come to be cherished even more than they already are.
“Well, I think we’re getting to that dangerous point with AI now, aren’t we?” he replies. “A year ago I’d watch AI videos and I could spot it instantly: ‘That’s AI, that’s AI, that’s AI’. But now, although I can still tell if something is AI, it takes just that little bit longer to spot it. It’s getting harder and harder.
“I think there is something really special about having a puppet, something that you can actually touch and interact with, something that has real physical presence. We’ve had computer-generated characters on screen for quite a few years now. Actors will often have to perform in front of a green screen – they’re performing to nothing, it’s just a big empty space – and sometimes you can tell this is what they were doing when you see the finished film or TV show.”
Although CGI hasn’t gone entirely out of fashion, there has definitely been a slight trend away from it in recent years.
“I think puppets, models, animatronics – there is always going to be a need for them,” says Andy. “It often largely depends on whichever studio is behind a production. Disney are pretty good. They try and use puppets on set as much as possible. If you look at the Star Wars stuff that is coming out now on Disney Plus, it’s all animatronics rather than CGI, and that’s lovely. And did you see Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice? It was a recent Beetlejuice film, a sequel to the 1980s original, and that had lots of puppetry work in it. CG was only used sparingly.
“I think it’s marvellous. CGI can age very badly and it can easily get very samey. When I see these big superhero films and everything on screen has been done on a computer, I could cry. I just want to see some real puppetry work out there.”
Suffice to say, Andy will be returning to Jersey for Avenue Q at the Arts Centre later this month, not to take part, but to sit in the audience and watch.
“I can’t wait to see it,” he says. “I’m always helping out behind the scenes with local productions. Jersey is my Achilles’ heel. If anyone in Jersey says: ‘We’d like you to build us a puppet’, I can’t say no.
“I did it for Nick Carver last year for his production of Shrek. I built the Gingerbread Man. But I enjoy it, especially if it means coming back to Jersey.
“If I hear someone say they need a prop or a set, I can’t resist saying ‘I’ll build it for you!’.”
*Avenue Q will be showing at the Jersey Arts Centre from Tuesday 14 to Saturday 18 October, 7.30pm. For more details, or to book, visit artscentre.je
‘Ricky Gervais spent all his spare time sitting and chatting with the Muppets’
