Just off a particularly busy stretch of Long Island City’s Northern Boulevard, on an upper floor of an old commercial building, quietly sits a behemoth of the puppetry world: Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
Now, for the first time, the workshop is offering public tours.
The facility, founded in 1963, has been at the current Queens location since the summer of 2009.
It is here that Muppets and puppets big and small, iterations of icons and experiments with newbies, are born and reborn again. Across the space are rooms containing drawers of eyeballs and noses, fabric reams and scraps galore.
Puppeteers dash about, trying on comically oversized monster heads (“walk-arounds,” these wearable costume-sized puppets are called) and doing the delightful but serious work of creating whatever creature or prop it is that’s needed for that horror franchise, this new “Fraggle Rock” production, that all-puppet “Star Trek” episode, or any other puppet-based film, TV show or live-action performance for which the Henson studio is in demand.
Retro creations – a stained glass depiction of Jim Henson, a Chippendale-style reception desk featuring inlaid wood Muppet portraits – adorn the space alongside movie props, including the throne from 1982’s cult classic puppet film “The Dark Crystal.”
It is a hub of creativity, and it is open to the public via 80-minute weekly weekend tours that include photo opportunities and a puppetry demonstration.
Despite the Henson studio’s work largely being for children, so far, mostly adults have attended, said puppeteer and New York creature shop director Melissa Creighton.
“A lot of people share stories about how inspiring it is to see the work on screen and then to see how it’s made, and to really have it be made real,” she said, before excitedly showing this reporter a cabinet full of puppet-friendly props, from a basketball to trays of hyperrealistic fake food.
A drawer full of eyeballs.
Resident archivist Susie Tofte sits at a desk in a windowed back section of the sprawling workshop’s main space, set amid myriad books of archival photos and drawings, many of which are still used as references today.
Tofte is seemingly all-knowing when it comes to Henson facts and figures, although she says a select few things remain a mystery, namely the whereabouts of a rare orange-skinned Oscar the Grouch and how the “Labyrinth” puppet Hoggle ended up in the Unclaimed Baggage Museum in Alabama.
One mystery she did recently solve was what happened to Thog, a blue Muppet who was one of the biggest puppets the workshop ever produced.
“He was basically melting,” Tofte said. “He was disintegrated and they had to destroy him.”
The working artists you meet are eager to share the tricks of their trade. The tour allows for a deeper look into the fluff and stuff that puppets are made of.
In contrast, the set where the Muppets and co. have been taping “Sesame Street” since 1993 is basically down the block, yet completely closed to the public.
Tickets are $150 plus tax and fees and are available Saturdays through September.
