Christmas movies and television programs, including “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “How The Grinch Stole Christmas,” “The Muppet Christmas,” and the 1964 stop-motion Rankin-Bass production of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” are all part of the seasonal celebration.
The Center for Puppetry Arts adds to the tradition with its “Festive Features” special museum exhibition on view through Jan. 8 and its beloved production of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Kelsey Fritz is the museum director at the Center for Puppetry Arts, and she joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to talk about this winter season’s events.
Interview highlights:
Original puppets from holiday film classics on display:
“This year, we really wanted to pull together a nice… holiday exhibit to compliment our ‘Rudolph’ stage production, which we also do every year. So in the past two years or so, we’ve acquired Santa and Rudolph puppets from the original 1964 Rankin-Bass production of Rudolph, ‘The Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ which is really exciting, just because in general, those are really important pieces to puppetry and stop motion pieces. But also, the Center does our stage production every year of the same, almost a shot-for-shot of the original film, so it was really special to have those in our collection,” said Fritz.
“Last year, we just displayed those. But this year, we have those original pieces, but we also have some pieces on display from ‘Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas,’ which is a Henson TV special that came out in the ’70s, as well as some Ed Sullivan Muppet-y reindeers that were used in the ‘Ed Sullivan Show,’ and for those of us who are nineties kids, the ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ cat in a reindeer costume from the 1990s CBS television show. So it’s a lot of good nostalgia across generations.”
On the Center’s 2014 acquisition of hundreds of original Jim Henson pieces:
“It was a really special project I had the privilege of working on. So the Jim Henson Legacy, which was kind of the arm of the Jim Henson family, wanting to be able to distribute their father’s collection of pieces… they were distributing the collection, and we were able to go up to New York and to look at their stuff in warehouses and be able to pick stuff to bring back to Atlanta, which was just really exciting,” Fritz recounted. “Every day was Christmas, where you’d open a box, and it would be Cookie Monster or other fun Muppets.”
“It was a really big deal, and I think our founder, Vince Anthony, deserves a lot of credit for being able to get that here to Atlanta,” said Fritz. “He had a long-running relationship with the Jim Henson family and with Jim himself when he was still alive. And I think something that people don’t know about Jim Henson is that he really cared about the broader puppetry community, not just film and television. So he was involved in things like Puppeteers of America and these larger international festivals and was really, really a great supporter… It was a big deal for us to get it, but at the same time, I think we were also a really natural home as the largest nonprofit in the U.S. dedicated to the art of puppetry.”
On the enduring magic of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:”
“There really is this intergenerational aspect to it. You know, at this point, several generations have been raised watching the show as kids, so I think to be able to see it performed live is just really exciting. I also think there’s something in the story. You know, it’s definitely about misfits finding their place and fitting in, and I think that speaks a lot to a lot of people, as far as just people finding their place and being different and figuring out how they fit in the world,” said Fritz.
The Center for Puppetry Arts’ special museum exhibition “Festive Features” is on view through Jan. 8, and their annual production of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is on stage through Dec. 31. Tickets and more information are available at https://puppet.org.
