Theatre for Lifelong Learning Artist Interview: Lee Armstrong, Part I

Photo Credit: Gord Robertson, “Lee Armstrong on Fraggle Rock with Baby Fraggle,” 1987

Text: Linda Lau & Rae Mansfield with Lee Armstrong

TFLL: We are Rae and Linda and this is Theatre for Lifelong Learning. Our guest today is Lee Armstrong. Lee Armstrong is co-owner, producer and puppeteer at Images In Motion Inc., a company that specializes in puppetry for TV and film. She is a recipient of two regional Emmys, as a producer/writer and puppeteer. She has worked on Canadian network TV and was a puppeteer on Jim Henson’s Emmy winning Fraggle Rock. Her puppetry can also be found in Follow That Bird, Monkeybone, and Being John Malkovich. Lee is a past President of the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild, and has been a consultant and instructor for TV workshops for Puppeteers of America. In addition to her creative work, Lee has taught puppetry for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at University of California, Berkeley and teaches Muppet Magic at University of California, Santa Cruz. Welcome Lee.

TFLL: How did you get into puppetry?

Lee Armstrong: I’ve always been interested in the arts. I come from a little tiny village in Nova Scotia and my mother loved theatre and music.

I did a year of university and I wanted to get some practical experience. I went looking for a job, went into Canada Employment, and I asked for a job in the arts.

The lady at the desk said, “Oh…well, we have jobs for waitresses, secretaries, and clerks.”

And I went, “Oh. I want a job in the arts, like theatre or music or photography.”

She says, “We have none of those.”

I said, “Could you make up a folder for the arts?”

She said, “I could, but it would do you no good.”

I went, “PLEASE!”

She tilted her head to the side and paused and then she wrote “The Arts” on a folder and put my resume in it. Then the very next day they get a job request from Mermaid Theatre looking for a puppeteer.

I auditioned. I was the only one who auditioned and I was hired. I went on tour with Mermaid up in Cape Breton Island and I put a puppet on my hand and it was just like magic. I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is so much fun!” I think I’ve just always been lucky. Things have fallen in my lap. From the first moment I tried on a puppet I knew this is what I wanted to do.

After that I tried to find out where I could learn puppetry. I ended up going to a number of Puppeteers of America festivals and that led me to a German puppeteer that was teaching at Ottawa University.

I was his only puppet student so I had undivided attention. I did all sorts of puppet projects and then I got hired in Toronto with Frog Print Theatre. The owner of that theatre, Nikki Tilroe gave me more training, then as she was going off to learn mime she gave me a TV show that she had been working on, a children’s show.

That led to auditioning for Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock along with 300 other people. They hired 10 people and I was one of the lucky 10.

Then I came out to California and I liked the weather. I met another puppet enthusiast, Kamela Portuges, and we set up a business. That was 34 years ago and that’s what we do.

TFLL: That folder set you off on an amazing adventure.

Lee Armstrong: I do a lot of teaching in the schools. I think grade two is my favorite and I always tell them, “If you discover what you like to do, then ask ask ask for what you want. Don’t just try and seek out what you want to do on your own. Ask for what you’d like to do.”

TFLL: How is puppetry a lifelong practice for you?

Lee Armstrong: I didn’t start out as a puppeteer. I started out as somebody interested in the arts. Puppetry just came along when I was about 20 years old.

Our company is Images In Motion. We specialize in puppetry. Much of what I do is client services and office management but we do get the opportunity to do puppetry. I really don’t consider it a job. I don’t really care how much I earn from it. I enjoy it. I find joy in puppetry.

I’m also active in our local puppet guild. I do a lot of programming, finding workshops that people will enjoy. I teach puppetry at [Puppeteers of America] festivals. I do a lot of volunteer work encouraging the art of puppetry.

Now that I’m in my later 60s, if I find somebody that’s really interested that is younger, I will invite them up to the workshop. I will offer free classes; I just think that puppetry is a unique art that brings a lot of joy.

TFLL: What’s one project you’re working on currently?

Lee Armstrong: We do a lot of commercial projects for different clients, including animation studios and commercial television, but what we really want to do is develop our own ideas. We’ll shoot them when we have time. We built the puppets and we have a shooting studio in my backyard. We all know how to shoot, edit, and puppeteer so we’re working on some puppet shorts right now from start to finish. We write the skits, build the puppets, puppeteer them, and we do all the video production.

We’re working on one where we’ve got two chickens. We are going to be shooting them in some virtual sets with real chickens walking around. The two chickens are the odd couple of the poultry world. One of them is very, very fastidious, very British, very upper crust and her nose is always in the air. And the other chicken is just a flibbertigibbet and excited about everything. I do the flibbertigibbet and my business partner, Kamela, does the snob, and together they explore life.

Kamela’s husband is also a puppeteer and builder. He wants to do vultures, “The Carrion of Life,” so we’ve got a male vulture, a female vulture, and a baby vulture. We have a wonderful lighting designer who actually worked on a lot of Jim Henson productions and he wants to light the graveyard at midnight. So we’re working on some sketches right now where we’ll have these very patient vultures waiting. It’s sort of dark humor.

And then we’re going to do a skit that’s set in the desert with tumbleweeds and we’ll have the vultures waiting there. There’s a lot of waiting in this. It’s sort of a take on Waiting for Godot.

We’re working on PSA’s for PBS. Last year we did water safety and this year we’re going to do fire safety and fire preparedness. We’ll be shooting some of those shortly. Puppets are really good at delivering messages in humorous ways.

We just finished up helping with puppets for Michelle Obama’s new Netflix series. It’s called Waffles and Mochi. We helped build some of the elements for it. Last week, the shop was busy with sending out little mochi balls that are going to travel and discover around the world.

TFLL: I love Waffles and Mochi. It’s wonderful. I love that Waffles is basically freezer fur come to life and Mochi is adorable.

Lee Armstrong: We’re doing some molding and casting for a TV animation studio and 3D printing for a movie animation studio. For ninety percent of our work, we can’t publicize these company names, but they’re all big. They actually pay the bills, so we can do the puppetry.

TFLL: We could talk all day about your work. It’s really fun hearing about your projects. They’re all so different.

Lee Armstrong: They are unusual. We’re the only puppet company we know that does 3D printing in a variety of materials. Well, I don’t, my business partner Kamela does. She 3D models puppet characters and then she 3D prints puppet parts. And because we have all this 3D printing, molding, and casting set up for animation companies, we use it for puppetry as well so we can make some really incredible things.

TFLL: What do you most appreciate about your puppetry now?

Lee Armstrong: I’ve always appreciated puppetry, but the more I see the more I appreciate the amazing variety of puppets. I used to always do Muppet-style puppets or hand puppets, but I’ve seen so much more, especially now with everything on the internet.

You can Google puppetry and you can see not only Muppet-style and hand puppets, but marionettes, shadows, rods and more. There’s a marionette short that is up for an Academy award. Marionettes are coming back.

Shadow puppets. There are some amazing shadow puppet productions. There was an Iranian production done in SF with shadow puppets, Feathers of Fire, which is just beautiful. There are gorgeous things being done with shadow puppets.

There’s toy theatre. You take a look at all of these European countries and there’s a lot of toy theatre coming out. There’s also experimental found object puppetry.

There are so many ways that people are expressing their ideas using puppetry. I think when I first started out, I didn’t see that variety, but over the years I’ve seen some amazing things.

TFLL: There has been like a wonderful resurgence in puppetry in contemporary performing arts, which takes us to our next question: how does puppetry relate to other performing arts and what is different about it from other performing arts?

Lee Armstrong: That’s an excellent question. I do believe that many view puppetry as the poor stepchild of the arts. I had a boyfriend who said, “Ooh, please don’t tell anybody you’re a puppeteer.” A lot of people do not appreciate the art and that’s why that boyfriend did not last.

TFLL: I was hoping it was safe to assume he’s now an ex-boyfriend.

Lee Armstrong: Yes, I have a very nice husband who won me by coming over and building puppets. He did this for a year and I honestly thought he liked building puppets. But when we married, he never helped again.

Getting back to the question. I think that puppetry shares the principles of good design, script writing, acting, directing, and creating the illusion of life on the stage. However, puppetry allows more freedom. An actor, or somebody who wants to be an actor, is straight jacketed by looks and age. A puppeteer can be anything. You can be a dragon. A witch. You can be a little boy. You can be an ogre. It’s very freeing and fun, and the beauty of it is that if you’re shy, you can just hide behind the curtain. But you’re entertaining and you’re getting all this wonderful vibration from the audience as long as you do a good show.

I also think that as an actor (now I don’t want to put down actors) but as an actor you usually come in and you do your role. Somebody else makes the set, somebody else does the costuming, and somebody else writes the script. In puppetry, very often a puppeteer will do all of those things.

It’s also a nice collaboration project because you may like to build puppets and perform. Somebody else might like to build stages, sets, and props. Because they’re usually smaller, you can get together a show in a shorter amount of time because you’re not filling up an entire stage. There are all sorts of advantages to being a puppeteer.

TFLL: You’ve given us a billion ideas now of more things we could do.