At Constellation Theatre Company, “Little Shop” has big ideas for innovative puppets

By Daniella Ignacio

In a season with high profile productions of “Little Shop of Horrors” across the country, the DMV
is getting its own taste of the Alan Menken sci-fi musical theatre classic this October, with a new
twist. “Little Shop of Horrors” at Constellation Theatre Company may be in a smaller space, but
they’re doing big things, especially with its innovative puppet design. Created by the intrepid
puppeteer/actor Matthew McGee, the four pods - designated as Pods One, Two, Three and
Four - display the terrifying development of a plant into an alien-like monster.

As the puppets are moved around the space and adjusted to be in the right place for a photo
call, McGee speaks fondly of them, calling each of the four pods “this guy” like an old friend
throughout the interview. McGee said that as a son of puppeteers, who joined them as they
toured around California doing shadow puppet shows at elementary schools, puppetry is a
pivotal part of his life.

“I like to tell people I was raised by puppets because I’ve been exposed to puppetry my whole
life,” said McGee. “Growing up with it, going to festivals in the summertime, taking workshops
and learning about puppetry...over the years, I just started tinkering with it and learning more by
experience.”

McGee’s recent projects include designing puppets for “The Lion King, Hr.” in Alexandria,
Minnesota’s Andrea Theatre and “My Father’s Dragon” at Synetic Theater last winter, in addition
to his own short film puppet theatre pieces. He believes in the power of making the impossible
happen through puppetry in theatre.

“I’m a big advocate of incorporating puppetry for theatre because it is, in my opinion, the closest
thing to magic that you can get on stage besides doing actual magic,” he said. “You can go to
the movies and get CGI and special effects, but to see a piece of live theatre and have it be just
as fantastical as something you could see in a movie, that excites me. If you can get people to
go ‘Whoah! What am I seeing?’ [and] if they think they’re seeing the impossible, that’s magic
and that’s what I live for.”

McGee’s original inspiration for the puppets came from his love of the original “Little Shop”
movie, which he said has some of the best puppetry in a movie that he’s seen. He wanted to
bring the life, articulation and believability of the original Jim Henson puppets into this
production, while also expanding upon the possibilities for making the puppets easy to
maneuver yet still terrifying and progressively alien-like. He called the process a “primarily solo
undertaking of monstrous proportions,” which started in August.

Oftentimes, with the bigger Pods Three (which sings “Get It”) and Four (the final version of
Audrey II that eats Audrey), the puppeteer has to sit or stand inside of the puppet with their
arms stretched out to control it, which McGee acknowledges is a workout. In McGee’s designs,
Audrey II is devised as an adaptation of a bunraku rod puppet where the puppeteer is not
confined inside of the puppet. The puppeteer, RJ Pavel, wears a black jumpsuit that covers him
from head to toe, gets into a harness that’s connected to the back of Audrey II’s head through a
rod and operates the plant from behind using that rig system. He uses handles that control the
mouth through the leaves the mask him and is completely hidden from the audience.

“You get to see the stem of the neck, and you get to see the head moving and everything is
alive,” McGee said. “Just seeing it in action - even for me, knowing how it works, I think ‘there it
is, there’s the magic.’”

A lot of the material used for the plants is high density foam rubber sheet, which comes in
sheets with different thicknesses and dry out patterns based on a model mockup. McGee blew
out the pattern to the scale that he needed, and then traced it on the foam, cut it and glued it
together to get the shapes of the heads and the leaves. They’re then painted and coated in
rubber to make them durable.

McGee said that he’s taken a lot of joy out of the differences in color patterns on the leaves,
which are inspired by not only plants, but reptiles like lizards and frogs. The baby Pod One,
“Twoey,” has leaves around his head that have highlights of greens and purples. By the time it
progresses to Pod Three, he’s still got purples and greens, but the tips are blue, orange and
yellow - it’s not exactly your typical “mean green mother,” but it’s definitely “from outer space.”
McGee is finishing up Pod Four, which will be darker, with more of a grey tone.

“I’m excited by the contrasts of darks and brighter eerie neon greens and yellows, so it becomes
less earthly,” he said. “The bigger he gets, the more alien he should become. It starts out
looking like a little flytrap but by the end he has to have the essence of a flytrap that grows into
something truly monstrous.”

McGee also uses his puppets to tie this production directly to the DMV area during the time
period of “Little Shop.” McGee put Twoey in a Wilkins coffee can, a popular DMV coffee brand
during the ‘60s, to pay homage to the fact that this production is being done in Washington,
D.C., where Jim Henson got his start. To make this “puppet nerdy happy little Easter egg,” he
found photos of the cans, edited the label from those photos, and Photoshopped it to put it onto
the can.

“It’s so satisfying,” he said. “I get to tie in all these things and make it pertinent to not only the
time period but also this show and the location.”

McGee was also involved in teaching the actors to use the puppets, and spoke highly of the
puppeteer RJ Pavel, who’s had puppeteering experience before. Pavel bases the movements a
lot of the inflections and cues of Marty Austin Lamar (the voice of Audrey II), and translates it
into the physical life and body language of the plant.
“It’s been great to hand something off to him, tell him what to do with it and then to see him put it
on and come to life instantly,” McGee said. “He’s been great and he gets it. He understands the
need to give it life, and not just move it but make it alive and make it have thoughts.”

While reading the article about the production of “Little Shop” off-Broadway and at Pasadena,
McGee thought that although they don’t have the budgets and production teams that go into
those productions at the small theatre that is Constellation, they’re still doing something very
exciting and original that he’s never seen before.

“I think a lot of people are gonna come to this show who’ve seen it before and kind of assume
that the plants are all gonna work the same,” McGee said. “I want them to just sort of forget. To
forget that they are seeing a play and just get caught up in the magic and get caught up in the
fact that there is a plant onstage rocking out, trying to convince poor little flower shop boy to
murder people for him, you know? To just buy into that, and afterwards to go, ‘What did I just
see?’”