ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Tara Bradbury
The Telegram
@tara_bradbury
At just 15 years old, Jake Thompson’s success in his chosen career field can already best be described by the immortal words of some of his celebrity icons: most sensational, inspirational, celebrational and very, very Muppetational.
Jake is a puppeteer and a puppet builder with his own talk show, a busy small business, an upcoming TED talk and some friends in high places, including on "Sesame Street."
When The Telegram first met Jake, he was 11 and earning popularity with “NL Now,” a talk show he started on YouTube that had been picked up by Rogers TV. The show features a purple-faced, plaid-wearing host puppet named Gary Wheeseltin (controlled under his desk by Jake) who has, over the years, interviewed a slate of popular local celebrities.
Since then, “NL Now” has become “NL Now Productions.” Jake wound things down with Rogers last February, but continues to create show episodes, most recently interviewing local native and Broadway star Petrina Bromley via Skype. With his puppets, Jake does workshops and birthday parties and has begun making his own puppets to sell.
He started with easy sock puppets, but one day came up with an idea for a character and couldn’t find the right parts to buy online to make it come to life. He enlisted his grandfather, and together they built Big Jim, using foam and fabric and contact cement.
“He’s a full body-type character, and it ended up being my Halloween costume that year. It was the first time I had controlled a puppet like that. I used one hand to work the head and the other hand to control the puppet’s hand,” Jake explains.
With a little help from his great-aunt and some self-teaching, Jake learned to sew, using the fabric left over from Big Jim to make smaller puppets. He’s now got his own sewing machine and a room full of puppet-making supplies.
“My basement is like a workshop, with more fabric than Fabricville,” says Jake’s dad, Chris Thompson. “He’s just as dedicated as ever. Even more dedicated, actually. He has so much imagination and creativity, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to make this a career.”
Jake says he realized there was no one selling his kind of puppets locally, so he decided to put some up for sale on the NL Now Productions Facebook page. He then branched out with craft fairs and farmers' markets and is now shipping orders across the country and to the United States, with customers that include theatre troupes, elementary schools and parents looking for birthday presents.
Jake’s creation process goes like this: he comes up with an idea and sketches it on paper, then sometimes he’ll find he has a previous pattern he can modify to fit the new design. Sometimes he’ll start from scratch.
“I find I can’t really see the personality of the puppet until the eyes are on,” he says. “I try to make a variety of them.”
He also does custom orders.
Many of Jake’s puppets seem to have been inspired by those of famed late puppeteer/filmmaker/screenwriter Jim Henson of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show” fame, and there’s a good reason for it: Jake hopes to follow in his footsteps.
Jake’s interest in puppets began as a toddler, causing his parents to track down a second copy of Season 1 of “The Muppets” after their first one literally wore out. It grew from there.
“It’s a challenge to become a professional puppeteer because there aren’t a lot of opportunities for it,” Jake says.
Disney has only a half-dozen core puppeteers, he says, and many puppet performers find work with theatre or circus projects not strictly related to puppetry.
“I have to create my own opportunities,” he says.
Jake isn’t shy when it comes to networking and learning everything he can about performing and building puppets. He has befriended online and chatted with many of the “Muppets” and “Sesame Street” puppeteers and crew, and was invited by Peter Linz, the current puppeteer behind Ernie on “Sesame Street,” to visit the show’s set if he is ever in New York.
Jake had been set to go to New York and spend a day on set as well as visit Henson’s former house and the Museum of Moving Image, but the trip was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was very disappointing,” Jake says. “But we’re hoping to reschedule for something soon when it’s safe to travel again.”
In the meantime, Jake will keep busy at home, preparing for his TED talk in the fall, building and selling his puppets and working on a top secret project with some accomplished TV professionals, due to happen in the fall.
He also hopes to keep building on his impressive Muppet room — a small room in his dad’s house where he keeps a vast and varied collection of all things Muppet-related. His prized possession, he says, is a script from the 2012 "Just For Laughs" gala in Montreal, which starred the Muppets and local comedian Mark Critch, who co-wrote the show and gave Jake the script.
“When I was Jake’s age, I booked the LSPU Hall with some friends for the first time to do a sketch show. Little did I think it would lead to me one day working with the Muppets,” Critch told The Telegram. “I have no doubt that Jake will be working on ‘Sesame Street’ one day. When he does, he may smile to think of how disappointing it was to have his trip (to New York) cancelled.
“One day he’ll be looking at the clock, waiting to leave ‘Sesame Street’ to get home and put his feet up.”
