A Henson Company-trained comedian puppeteer is in Lethbridge this week at St. Patrick Fine Arts Elementary School to teach students about the art of puppeteering.
DerRic Starlight and his Indigenous puppets, The Nuppets, are in the city to offer students a “Puppet Making 101” crash-course.
“We’re going to teach the children how to make their own puppet characters. Each child always has a character they love on television or something they want to be in life. It’s using their creativity and using puppetry,” Starlight explains.
On Friday, Starlight adds, there will be a showcase of some of the top puppets from each class. “We’ll do a presentation plus I’ll do a performance for the school.”
Starlight is from the Tsuut’ina Nation, west of Calgary and the Blood Tribe. He often performs in the Lethbridge area at Blood Tribe events.
Starlight says he’s been performing since he was a kid. “Canadians were raised by puppets on television. Especially communities that never had cable television growing up. All we had was CBC, so we grew up with shows like ‘Fred Penner,’ ‘Mr. Dressup,’ ‘The Friendly Giant’ and ‘Sesame Street.’”
Starlight always loved “The Muppet Show” and “Fraggle Rock,” as well. “Anything that Jim Henson did, I really loved. At a very young age, that’s all I wanted to do was try to work on ‘Sesame Street’ and work with the Jim Henson Company.”
Starlight’s been a puppeteer with APTN since 2002 and performs with The Nuppets. “Jim Henson called his characters ‘The Muppets’ because they’re half marionette and half puppet. My characters are called ‘The Nuppets’ because they’re half native and half puppet. I’ve been doing that for quite some time.”
And finally, Starlight’s dream came true in 2001. “I now work with the Jim Henson Company. I work on the reboot of ‘Fraggle Rock,’ which is on Apple TV right now. And I’m currently being trained by ‘Sesame Street’ puppeteers to hopefully work on Season 56, if it comes out.”
Moving forward, Starlight says he’d like to bring this project to all the schools in Lethbridge.
(Photo submitted by DerRic Starlight)
