It all started when…

I was in Puppet School. In Frank Ballard’s Hand puppet class, day 2, we were taught “Hand Mime”, and I fell in love! I immediately announced to Frank that I wanted to do a whole show of hand mime! “No one would watch hand mime for a whole show” was his response. I took It as a personal challenge. Two years later I produced, with immense help from my fellow puppet majors, “A Show of Hands”, a 40 min. live variety show, with all the pieces being a form of hand mime. That show went on to be performed at the Puppeteers of America National Festival in 1991, and then received the UNIMA Citation for Excellence in the Art of Puppetry in 1992. Oh, and Frank liked it, too.

I remounted a new version of the show in 2001 at the HERE arts center in NYC, where it was seen by Agi Fodor. I was working with her at Nickelodeon, doing Stick Stickly segments. She proposed that we modify some of the “Hands” segments to be filmed as interstitials on Nick! How could I say no! So the following films are some of the Nick segments directed by Agi (with puppetry help from Jim Napolitano and Rick Lyon). Enjoy!

And here is a compilation of all the Nickelodeon shorts that someone was kind enough to edit together and put on Youtube! Thanks!