Foamhenge & Public Access Puppetry

Foamhenge is a sketch from Lifeformz, an award-winning puppet show produced on public access television.

Public access television was the YouTube of the pre-web era. In the 1980s and early `90s it was a fertile breeding ground for puppet video, producing underground hits like Ed the Sock, Greg the Bunny and Mystery Science Theater 3000 that were later picked up by cable channels and went on to mainstream success.

Considering just how many puppeteers got started working on public access, it’s always great to see these old videos making their way on to the web. Brian Stokes has been uploading some videos to YouTube from LifeFormz, an Academy award-winning college TV access puppetry & animation show he worked on from 1993-95 at the University of Pennsylvania. I particularly like Foamhenge, a sketch that reminds me of the Muppets’ old Mount Rushmore sketch.

Note To The Die Hard MSTies: I know that MST3k wasn’t technically started on public access, but the first season at KTMA was done with a budget so small it might has well have been public access.