Jim-Bob Goes Viral
Puppetry is one of the oldest forms of storytelling in the world. Online content creation is decidedly not. Putting the two together turned out to be exactly the kind of combination that made that class hard to forget.
The theme for that session was Content Creator, built around the world of vloggers, unboxing videos, cooking channels, and gaming streams,
a world children in this age group know better than most adults do. The idea was to take that familiar territory and use it as the stage for something much older. Puppetry. Specifically, multi-person live-hand puppetry, where two or three students work together to bring a single puppet character to life. Multi-person live-hand puppetry is deceptively challenging. Each student controls a separate part of the puppet, one controlling the head, the others each controlling a hand and arm. To make it feel natural they have to move together, listen, and stay completely in sync. The real test comes when the puppet needs to handle an object. Something as simple as opening a bottle requires one hand to hold it and the other to manipulate it, with two students coordinating a single action in real time. Think of two people trying to open a jar of jam together, one holding and one twisting. On more than one occasion, the coordination slipped, and the puppet ended up with three hands without the students even realizing they were doing it.
The puppet at the centre of it all was one I made specifically for the theme. One of the groups named him Jim-Bob, though each group gave him their own name to fit their channel. What followed was a lineup of original shows performed through puppetry and improv, from cooking channels to gaming streams to fashion reviews. The scenes were funny, clear, and surprisingly well put together for what was essentially unscripted.
Written by Karlo Ghokasian
Founder & Program Lead, Found Stage
Originally published in the Found Stage Magazine, Summer 2026 issue.
