Fraggle Rock Musical and Jim Henson Creature Shop Tours Bring Muppet Magic to NYC

At the New Victory Theater on 42nd Street, audiences of all ages are being welcomed to the Rock — Fraggle Rock, that is. After more than a year of touring the country, the full-length family musical Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock has made it to the Big Apple, where it runs off-Broadway through June 21.

The idea of bringing the Fraggles to the stage had been living in the mind of the show’s writer/director, John Tartaglia, “forever,” he says, surveying the life-sized puppets at the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in Long Island City. “I grew up watching the original series and I couldn’t believe that in the 40-something years of the show being on, they never had a live show.”

It’s an omission that seemed glaring. After all, Sesame Street Live has toured for decades, The Muppets have played the Hollywood Bowl, and the unauthorized-but-nevertheless adjacent Avenue Q has been seen all around the world. But the Fraggles, those joyful creatures whose entire existence is a celebration of community, have never made the leap off the television screen.

For Tartaglia, who serves as creative supervisor of the Fraggle Rock franchise for the Jim Henson Company, the timing finally felt right. The recent Emmy-winning Apple TV+ revival, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, introduced a new generation to Gobo, Red, Wembley, Mokey, and Boober, while longtime fans revelled in the return. “We have this wonderful cross-generational audience now. And I love theater, obviously, so it was like my blend of my worlds.”

The stage adaptation, which has recorded vocals by veteran Muppeteers Dave Goelz and Karen Prell, among others, is a 90-minute production with all the trappings of a traditional Broadway experience, including an intermission. “My hope was that it could be a kid’s first musical,” Tartaglia says. “It has that sense of a big story and all the things you’re used to in theater. But I really wrote it as someone who thinks it’s so important to have that family experience. There’s something for you, something for your kid, something for grandma, something for everybody. It’s not a little kid’s show. It’s a family show.” (Have no fear, there are also grown-up nights.)

One of the biggest creative questions revolved around how the Fraggles would look on stage. The television series relies on hand-and-rod puppets, resembling Tartaglia’s experiences on Avenue Q and as a Henson puppeteer. Tartaglia and the Henson team opted for full-bodied, walk-around Fraggle characters, a decision unlocked the visual world of the show. With the Fraggles human-sized, the tiny Doozers could become the scale of the hand-and-rod puppets, while larger creatures like the Gorgs and Marjory the Trash Heap could become super-sized.

Jason Weber, Creative Supervisor for the New York-based Creature Shop projects, says translating the tiny Fraggles into full-body characters required a entirely different thinking. “You’re trying to figure out the techniques that we’re going to try to realize the little tiny guys as human size,” he says, noting that it could take nearly two months to build the walk-around figures, if not longer, depending on the difficulty level.

The in-costume performers also must adapt to an unusual hybrid style. “It’s still puppetry, but it’s a different kind,” Tartaglia explains. “With traditional puppets, you’re opening your hand at every syllable. Here, it’s the opposite. You have to close your hand at every syllable. It’s the same principles, just in a different format.” It takes a lot of trust. They can only see directly through their headpiece’s mouth.

At the same time that Fraggle Rock is taking the stage on 42nd Street, audiences can get a first-hand look at the creation process just a few subway stops away. For the first time in its history, the Jim Henson Creature Shop has begun offering public tours on Saturdays, an unexpected shift for a company that has largely operated in ways that wouldn’t dispel the magic.

Opening the workshop to visitors, gives audiences a chance to understand the exacting level of artistry involved. “It’s an opportunity for them to get a glimpse of what it’s like working here,” Weber says. “To get an appreciation of the artisans that we have working here.” Tours have only been granted to special guests in the past; now, anyone can attend, with tickets reasonably priced at $150 (the tours are recommended for guests ages eight and up).

“We wanted that direct line to our fans and the public, which we really don’t have,” says Melissa Creighton, director of the New York Workshop. The response was immediate. The first four weekends of tours sold out within hours.

The tours offer a rare opportunity to see the full scope of Henson craftsmanship up close, from sculpting and fabrication to performance techniques, presented by professional Henson puppeteers. There are photo opportunities with Oscar the Grouch, the puppet-sized Fraggles, and the characters from the Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas stage production, which ran at the New Victory several years ago. You can sit in the throne from the original Dark Crystal, as well.

The Creature Shop tours, the Fraggle Rock musical, and the ongoing Jim Henson exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria create a portrait of the Henson legacy in New York. What connects them also connects the Fraggles: a celebration of community, where artists and puppeteers actively work to push the form forward, while developing new ways to make audiences of all ages believe in magic.

“You make something and hope people like it,” Tartaglia says. “We were sold out in Las Vegas, which is a difficult place to sell out, and hearing thousands of people cheer for the Fraggles when they came out on stage? I started crying. I was like, ‘This is real.'”