2026, Smoosicals
Every puppet-builder’s dream, I was commissioned in 2026 to build a full set of Audrey II plants for ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. From the first tiny sprout to her man-munching final form, this was a challenge and a joy, and I also got to design the poster image for the show!
Pod 1
Pod 1 is the cutest of all the Audrey IIs, and it’s usually performed as a hand puppet by someone sitting inside a solid desk. I saw the opportunity to build in a little magic. This pod 1 is cable-operated, and I built a trick desk to hide the puppeteer, with a secret panel that could drop out so they could access the controls on the bottom of the plant. I thought it was all pretty obvious, but the most common question I got after the shows was “how did it work?”.
Pod 2
Pod 2 is a traditional hand puppet, featuring a fun fake-arm trick.
Pod 3
Pod 3 is usually performed by a sitting puppeteer who operates the vines with their feet, but we wanted an Audrey who could have the maximum freedom to move and perform and that meant two puppeteers – one standing and operating the mouth, the other lying down and performing four tentacles at once.
Pod 4
Pod 4 is the biggest of the bunch. This Audrey II has to eat three cast members, and I wanted to make it a bit more spectacular than the usual version so I built a mechanism to let her lift victims up to 2m in the air. This puppet took three puppeteers to come to life, not to mention the helpful spare cast as counterweights!
