It’s not very often that I share some of my own work here, but recently I had a blast doing some puppetry for the pilot episode of a new Canadian political web series and I wanted to share the results with all of you, although – fair warning – you may need a working knowledge of Canadian politics to understand most of the humour!

(Please note that the video is mildly NSFW due to some the implied sexual content at the beginning).

Harper Puppet Pals is part of the Satire Project, a proposed hub for Canadian political humour. It’s being developed by Suzanne Gallant and Andreas “Res” Krebs – the husband and wife duo behind The Krellant web series - in partnership with the left-wing Canadian online magazine Rabble.ca and some extremely funny Canadian writers and comics. They’ve launched an ambitious fundraising campaign and are trying to raise $30,000 to fund the project by mid-November (as of this writing they’re approximately 20% of the way there).

I worked on the Harper Puppet Pals shoot with Joel Brubacher, who played Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Res, who alternated with me on Leona Aglukkaq and Peter Kent/The Lizard King, depending on the shot and what was required in it. The caricatured finger puppets we used were made by Gabe Thirlwall, a Canadian textile artist who has an entire series of Canadian Political Finger Puppets called The Political Circus. The Harper Puppet Pals pilot was directed by Suzanne Gallant.

A small gallery of behind-the-scenes photos can be found here.

If you’d like to see more Harper Puppet Pals, please support The Satire Project on IndieGoGo!