Henson Day
Every year on September 24th, the campus and surrounding communities celebrate the life, legacy, and works by University of Maryland alumnus, Jim Henson '60 & '78. Known for The Muppets, Sesame Street, The Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock, and much more, Jim Henson laid the foundation for his future creations during his time as a student at UMD where he designed sets, programs, and posters for student theater productions. He also ran a silk screen printing business out of the Student Union, took a puppetry course where he met his first performing partner and future wife, Jane Nebel '55. Together, they developed and performed a daily five-minute show with puppets on local Washington, D.C. airwaves, WRC-TV, called Sam and Friends. The rest is history.
Jim Henson's imaginative storytelling of fantasy worlds combined with his mastery of and innovations in puppetry and media technology enabled him to creatively bring his Muppets to life. Generations of people all around the globe have been and continue to be inspired by Jim Henson's creations.
Be part of the fun on Henson Day or any day by spending some time unleashing your creativity and sharing your favorite Henson characters and stories on social media. When you post your gifs, images, and videos, don't forget to use the hashtags #HensonDay, #HappyHensonDay, and #TerpsHeartHenson.
Jim Henson as a University of Maryland Student
In 1954, Jim Henson entered the University of Maryland, College Park as a major in studio art. The multitude of artwork that survives from this point in Jim’s career indicates that he had a colorful visual imagination, a sharp eye for detail, and a creative knack for design. As a freshman at the University of Maryland, Jim was given the opportunity hone his puppetry skills during a course in the Home Economics Department, as well as through practical experience. His earliest endeavors into television took place immediately before and during his time as an undergraduate at UMD. While a student in a puppetry class, he met fellow University of Maryland student Jane Nebel, who was an early partner in his television shows and would later become his wife.
Following a short-lived morning puppet segment on a local Washington station, Jim was hired by WRC-TV in 1955 to create a five-minute puppet show that would air twice nightly. Entitled Sam and Friends, this program earned Henson his first Emmy in 1958 – two years before his graduation from the University of Maryland. For Sam and Friends, Henson introduced many of the elements that would become mainstays of his Muppet Show aesthetic – music, zany humor, and an early Kermit as a lizard-like creature. During his time at Maryland and WRC-TV, Jim Henson began to develop innovative puppetry skills that made his Muppets life-like and expressive, and that would have a profound effect on the way puppetry would be performed for television and films.
Throughout his career, Jim's connection to the University of Maryland remained strong. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree and was the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Distinction serving as the Grand Marshall at the University's Homecoming parade. Jim was also active with the University of Maryland Foundation and Kermit the Frog served as the spokesfrog. After Jim's passing in 1990, the UMD Marching Band honored Jim and Jane with a Homecoming tribute.
Jim Henson's Legacy at the University of Maryland
On September 24th, 2003, this bronze statue of Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog sitting on a red granite bench and weighs 450 pounds was unveiled in a joyous gathering of family, friends, and members of the campus community. It was created by sculptor Jay Hall Carpenter who was awarded the commission after an extensive design competition led by Jane Henson. The statue is surrounded by a memorial garden, designed by landscape architect Philip Cho. The landscaped garden provides a welcoming setting to enjoy Jim Henson's creativity, humor, and positive vision. The entire project cost $217,000 and was funded in part by gifts from the Classes of 1994, 1998, and 1999.
You can read more about the creation of the statue and the Jim Henson Memorial Garden at the University of Maryland at the Muppet Wiki.
To honor the legacy and creative genius of University of Maryland alumnus Jim Henson ‘60, alumna Jane Henson ‘55 established the Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence Program in 2006. The generosity of the Henson family has allowed the school to bring internationally acclaimed puppet artists to campus for a semester-long residency to teach courses, conduct workshops, create puppets for main season productions and mentor student artists with independent study projects.
Recent artists include:
- Blair Thomas
- Ralph Lee and the Mettawee River Theatre Company
- Chinese Theatre Works’ Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin
- Basil Twist
- Zvi Sahar and Leslie Strongwater of PuppetCinema
- Aaron Cromie
- Alex Vernon
- Robin Forhardt
- Kevin Augustine
In 2002, Jane Henson established The Henson Endowment for Performing Arts which supports Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center programs related to puppetry.
In 1996, Jane Henson established The Jim Henson Fund for Puppetry to foster interest in and encourage student work in the art of puppetry. The School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies hosts an annual competition and recipients are awarded funds to create a puppet project or performance. Every year the talented student recipients perform/present their funded projects during the Henson Awards Showcase.
Read more about the a few of The Jim Henson Fund for Puppetry recipients below.
Jim Henson awards showcase brings student puppeteers to the main stage
- By Chris Barylick
For The Diamondback - April 3, 2023
Students preform "STUMBLE MERGE," a puppetry-focused original one-act, on March 30, 2023. This project was exhibited during the 2023 Henson Awards Showcase, a collection of performances hosted by the theatre, dance and performance studies school at the University of Maryland, that present student projects funded by the Jim Henson Fund for Puppetry. (Giuseppe LoPiccolo/The Diamondback)
It was a surreal series of performances at the Cafritz Foundation Theater in The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center for the Henson Awards Showcase 2023 Thursday night. In a packed house, five award recipients presented their puppetry pieces and explained the meaning behind them.
The showcase, which was inspired by University of Maryland alum and Muppets creator Jim Henson and collaborator Jane Henson, awards recipients get $1,500 to write, build and perform a piece.
This year’s selections went to Mary Kathryn Ford, a graduate dance major, Charlotte Rachel Richardson-Deppe, a graduate studio art major, Leo Grierson, a graduate theatre design major, Daniel Miramontes, a graduate dance major and Miele Murray, a freshman theatre major.
“I’m really glad we got this award,” Richardson-Deppe said. “It’s been wonderful to be supported. I think as someone who moves between performance and art, this is like a perfect joining of performance and art where I can totally bring soft sculpture and MK [Mary Kathryn Ford] can bring all their dance background. And we can jam.”
The show began with master puppeteer Dr. I Nyoman Sedana, who presented an Indonesian folk story about emptiness and creation.
Sedana, who opened the performance by singing and using his hands as puppets, eventually brought out a series of intricately designed puppets. He then interacted with the crowd, handing them puppets and having them make noises as part of the story.
Ford and Richardson-Deppe performed their piece, “STUMBLE MERGE,” the two beginning intertwined in a giant yellow shirt and pants with interconnected sleeves and legs, using their weight in a way that blurred the idea of whose limbs were whose.
“I’m influenced a lot by my past in the circus, and by thinking about how bodies interact with each other,” Richardson-Deppe said before the showcase.
She was pointed to a large puppet made entirely of stuffed, interconnected pants and leggings that would house her showcase partner, Ford, during one of their segments.
The showcase moved on to Grierson’s “Playing Wolves,” which combined more traditional wolf puppets with comparisons about self-identity, external perception and fitting into a pack or community while also exploring gender identity.
The story was told a first time, and then moved into digital puppetry. Their digital wolf avatars, which had been created with Unity software, appeared as puppets on a projection screen behind them, where they recreated the story in a new format.
Miramontes’ “Drops of Gold” segment began with Miramontes entering with dancers carrying mylar sheets they laid down on the floor and carefully unwrapped, gold side up. They began to lift the interconnected mylar sheets, hanging them off their arms like puppets and bouncing them.
As the performance progressed, the movements became pronounced, the crinkling began to sound like the ocean as Miramontes and the dancers finally laid down on the blankets to complete the performance.
“I was looking at videos on Jim Henson, and in one of the videos that I found, something that really stuck out to me was he said that anything can be a puppet,“ Miramontes said.
When asked if he was nervous about the showcase, Miramontes said, “It’s an idea that you’re proposing. And I guess it comes from like a personal place of, ‘I really am interested in exploring this.’”
Murray’s “Here to Wed Socabane” piece concluded the showcase. Murray told the tale of royal puppet intrigue within the kingdom of Evolir and discussed whether portraits and love letters reveal an entire character, especially with marriage at stake.
“I paid a lot of attention to facial structure and to their physical appearances in this show, not only because it’s important to the plot, like for my story, but also because I wanted to create a different world,” Murray said. “I kind of had to find a nice in between of humble materials but also a unique design.”
She combined puppetry, singing and dancing within her work.
Murray also recalled overcoming obstacles in building her puppets and how some of their parts had to be swapped out in a pinch.
“I definitely had to take one of their jaws off. It sounds very, very brutal, but it had to happen. I think that was the most grotesque thing I had to do,“ she said.
Members of the university community came out to watch the performance.
“It’s intriguing that stuff I work with in computer science and immersive media was found here in the fine arts department where I didn’t know they were using any of this stuff,” Stevens Miller, a lecturer in the computer science and immersive media design departments, said. “I thought the limits of puppetry were broader than I expected they might be.”
They've Got the World on a String-or a Rod
Students Bring Their Henson-Funded Puppet Creations to the Stage
- By Sala Levin ’10
- April 03, 2019
Tonight's Henson Awards Showcase will feature puppet-centric pieces from students, including Kristen P. Ahern's sustainably sourced creations and Olivia Brann's Sylvia Plath-inspired puppet (below).
Photos by Stephanie S. Cordle
Tonight's Henson Awards Showcase will feature puppet-centric pieces from students, including Kristen P. Ahern's sustainably sourced creations and Olivia Brann's Sylvia Plath-inspired puppet (below).
Sylvia Plath might not have made much sense as a Muppet—try imagining Fozzie Bear in an adaptation of “The Bell Jar”—but that doesn’t mean she can’t work as a puppet. With long, foreboding black arms and a variety of faces (including one birdlike mask), the famously troubled poet takes puppet form in “Dear Sylvia,” a one-person performance piece created by Olivia Brann ’14, M.A. ’19.
“Dear Sylvia” is part of tonight’s Henson Awards Showcase, a celebration of the student recipients of the Jim Henson Fund for Puppetry, named for the renowned Muppets creator who graduated from UMD in 1960. Puppeteer Jane Henson ’55 (Jim’s wife) started the fund that annually supports four students’ puppet projects. The topics aren’t the lighthearted stuff of Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: Mental illness, pollution, grief and Jungian psychology are all on the table.
“Just like Jim Henson made ‘The Dark Crystal’ and ‘Labyrinth,’ there is a duality,” said Brann. “It’s for children, but it’s for adults as well.”
After a high school reading of “The Bell Jar”—Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman’s experiences with mental illness—Brann became interested in the writer and eventually created “Dear Sylvia” to “say it’s okay to not be okay, but at the end of the day you do have hope. There is light in the world.”
Kristen P. Ahern MFA ’19 was inspired by the Ghost Festival celebrated in Asian countries, in which ghosts and spirits are believed to emerge from their realm. When she learned that air pollution increases dramatically during the festival, she decided to create something environmentally sustainable inspired by the celebration, using recycled and found materials to build her four puppets.
“One of the things I’ve always been interested in as a designer is the waste that is created as we design,” said Ahern. “We put up plays or musicals or operas for two weeks and then everything gets thrown away or put into storage until it gets thrown away 20 years later.”
Using shipping boxes, bubble wrap, scrap fabric, elements of shelving units and more, Ahern created puppets inspired by fire, water, air and earth. (No puppets will be harmed during the fire component, she promises.)
Also presenting their projects will be Christopher Brusberg MFA ’19 and Lauren Duffy, whose work focuses on the grieving process, and MFA dance candidate Stacey Carlson ’19, whose piece explores Jungian theories of personality.
The showcase isn’t the only puppet-centric offering in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies this semester; the course “Puppet Cinema: When Film and Puppetry Meet on Stage” gives students the chance to learn about the craft from puppeteers.
Puppetry is “a part of both dance’s history and theater’s history,” said Maura Keefe, interim director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. “It’s a great part of Maryland’s history as well because of Jim Henson’s legacy.”
In January 2005, The Jane Henson Foundation and The Jim Henson Legacy generously donated videos and funding to support the creation of what is now known as The Jim Henson Works at the University of Maryland. This collection makes available to UMD’s community of students, scholars, and visitors over 70 digital videos spanning 35 years of Henson’s groundbreaking work in television and film. These full-length videos are available for viewing at public computer stations in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, McKeldin Library, and Hornbake Library.
The Edward L. Longley Collection on Jim Henson covers the period from 1957 to 2003; the bulk of the materials date from 1979 to 1997. The collection includes a brief biography and lesson plan on puppetry, but the majority consists of newspaper clippings and various periodicals featuring narratives on Jim Henson's career. Also included are a few photographs of Jim Henson, his artwork, and two paper-mache heads, one male and one female.
Happy Henson Day!
Share your appreciation of all-things-Henson every September 24th!
This fun-filled tradition celebrates the life and legacy of Jim Henson and provides those who were and continue to be inspired by his creations an opportunity to share their appreciation on his birthday. Henson Day was established in 2018 by the UMD Henson Committee, which includes various campus and local community members, along with support from The Jim Henson Legacy.
To kick-off of this annual celebration, the UMD Office of Marketing and Communications published, "Five Things You Didn't Know About Jim Henson's Time as a Terp," in Maryland Today.
Here are a few ways you can join the fun on Henson Day:
- Articles
- Baltimore Magazine: Jim Henson Exhibit Celebrates Visionary Puppeteer’s Legacy—and Maryland Roots
- Boundary Stones: The Muppets Take Maryland
- Esquire: A Muppet Is Born Is the Star Is Born Remake We Deserve
- Film Cred: Jim Henson and the ABCs of Filmmaking
- KQED: A Deeper Look at Jim Henson, the Man Behind the Muppets, and His Unbridled Innovations
- Mental Floss: 31 Genius Facts About Jim Henson
- Mental Floss: Remembering Jim Henson
- Blogs
- Commercials
- Documentaries/Films/Movies
- History & Imagery
- 37c Jim Henson single stamp
- Bert Puppet
- Chicken Liver Puppet from Sam and Friends
- Cookie Monster Puppet
- Count von Count Puppet
- Elmo Puppet
- Ernie Puppet
- Fozzie Bear Puppet
- Harry the Hipster Puppet from Sam and Friends
- Jim Henson photograph
- Kermit the Frog Puppet
- Miss Piggy Puppet
- Prairie Dawn Puppet
- Rowlf the Dog Puppet
- Sam Puppet from Sam and Friends
- The Muppets Lunchbox
- The Swedish Chef Puppet
- Music
- Podcasts
- Puppetry
- Television
- Videos
- Wiki
- Exhibits
- Atlanta, Georgia - Center for Puppetry Arts: World's of Puppetry
- Baltimore, Maryland - The Maryland Center for History and Culture. From May 26th - December 30th, 2023: The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited
- Queens, New York - Museum of the Moving Image: Imagination Unlimited
- Washington, D.C. - National Museum of American History: Miss Piggy Joins Kermit the Frog at the Smithsonian
- Dearborn, Michigan - The Henry Ford: Celebrating Jim Henson and His Legacy
- Plaques
- School
Inspiration to Spur your Imagination
Explore these resources and read more about Jim Henson's legacy as an Artist, Innovator, Inventor, Storyteller, and a Difference Maker.
