Henson puppets meet improv comedy in ‘Puppet Up! Uncensored'

Six comedic improvisers, dozens of fuzzy puppets and limitless possibilities.

That pretty much sums up Puppet Up! Uncensored, which combines the style of puppetry originated by Jim Henson with improvisational comedy games fueled by audience prompts.

The performers don’t shy away from adult themes, so it can lean a little raunchy, earning this particular cast of puppets the group title of “miskreants.”

The "miskreant" puppets from "Puppet Up!"

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Omar Gaieck

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The world lost Jim Henson in 1990, but many artists, including his own children, have kept both the craft and the business going. Son and accomplished puppeteer Brian Henson is chairman of the L.A.-based Jim Henson Company and creator of Puppet Up! Uncensored.

While no “Muppets” are included in the show, the production does include recreations of several original Jim Henson puppets from early in his career interspersed with others from previous Henson productions and some more recent creations made for Puppet Up! specifically.

“They're really old,” Henson said. “It's super fun to rebuild those puppets and actually perform those scenes in front of a live audience. That hasn't happened in 40, 50 years probably.”

Behind the scenes takes center stage

Puppet Up! is really two shows at once.

On top of being a mash-up of sketches, hosted by director and co-creator Patrick Bristow, the audience actually gets to see how it all happens.

The Henson style of puppetry, from design to performance, is tailored for the camera, but in Puppet Up! Uncensored, audience members see both a staged-for-screen performance on video projection, and all the puppeteers' work that’s usually hidden from view, including the performers’ faces when things go awry.

“It's really fun to let people see how we do it because it's clever and it's chaotic,” Henson said. “It also means our audience watches the show in a kind of very different way.”

Bringing it all out into view allows the audience to connect with performers who are usually behind the scenes. “ It sort of just gives it a double layer of entertainment value,” Henson said.

Puppets vs. artificial intelligence

The Muppet Show was brought back by Disney for a Disney+ special earlier this month in honor of the show’s 50th anniversary. Jim Henson’s Muppets actually turned 70 in 2025, and the appetite for the characters and the district Henson style of puppetry hasn’t waned. Audiences are hungry for details of a Miss Piggy movie, reportedly helmed by Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.

(While Disney has owned the Muppets since 2004 and The Jim Henson Company now only consults on Muppet projects when it is asked to, Henson’s take on the recent special is that it was “really good” and he hopes it’s picked up as a series. All he knows about the Miss Piggy movie, he told LAist: “I don’t think it’s very far along.”)

What’s behind the lasting appeal of puppets and The Muppets specifically?

Henson argues puppetry may be the oldest art form if you think about the basic act of imbuing an object with personality — something parents do instinctively with young children.

“ I used to bring to life my daughter's pajamas,” he said. “That was the way to get her to put her pajamas on so that she would go to bed.”

But that doesn't mean it's ever been particularly mainstream. Even Jim Henson had to shop around the original Muppet Show before it found a spot on American primetime TV, but Henson said he’s felt a shift in just the past few months in response to artificial intelligence.

“The AI craze has created a backlash of, 'Please let me see human craftsmanship, human artistry, where I know that this is coming from a human's artistic mind,'” Henson said. “So I think right now there is just an enormous appreciation for artistry that is not computer-generated in any way. That will benefit all sorts of arts, but it certainly benefits puppetry for sure.”

Some puppet philosophy

Henson describes Puppet Up! as a celebration of the “absurdity of the human condition” and said performing with puppets can elicit a more open response from audiences.

“The audience watches puppets with the innocence of a child, even if they're 70 years old,” he said.

And that distance can allow an emotional access you might not get with actors alone.

“It makes it possible to laugh at themselves rather than be offended,” Henson said. “So particularly in a period of time like now, where everybody's scared of somebody hating them … we can sort of play out examples of that kind of friction with puppets. That's gonna give you objectivity and allow you to sort of reflect.”

"Puppet Up! Uncensored" is playing at The Montalbán from Friday through Sunday.