🎭 Waiting For Henson
February 1–23, 2019
The Playhouse on the Park Theatre – Phoenix, AZ

Two beings meet on a desolate stretch of road. Time collapses. Nothing happens. Then it happens again. And again. The only difference between this and Waiting for Godot? Our guy actually shows up.

This wasn’t a parody—it was a puppet revolution wrapped in existential confusion. All Puppet Players’ first original production, Waiting for Henson was an absurdist fever dream where philosophy, puppetry, and nonsense collided in a beautifully chaotic void.

Written and directed by Shaun Michael McNamara, the show was created as a direct jab at the kind of cerebral theater that dares audiences to assign meaning to the meaningless. But rather than flirt with pretension, APP dove in headfirst, tore it apart from the inside, and threw the scraps at the audience. There was no structure. No answers. No comforting moral takeaway. Just a puppet and a man waiting for something—anything—that never comes. Until it does.

The show gleefully abandoned rationality. Puppets snorted Funyons and vomited existential dread, while cocaine jokes crashed into Camus references and monologues wandered through intellectual minefields with all the confidence of a drunk philosopher in clown shoes.

As one stunned audience member put it:

“You’re a porn king trying Shakespeare—and it somehow works.”

The show confused some. Frustrated others. But a brave few saw it for what it was: a raw, self-aware, and deeply unhinged exploration of meaninglessness. One such fan wrote:

“It was funny, audacious, contemporary, and classic… You had to know there were going to be setbacks. You chose to blend serious art with puppets vomiting Funyons. But don’t stop. It’s worth it—even if most people would rather watch porn.”

Whether Henson was theater, parody, or an existential cry for help remains unclear. But one thing’s certain: it proved that nothing means anything, and anything means everything—especially if it’s coming out of a puppet’s mouth.

Performances ran:
February 1–23, 2019
(Nothing happened. On purpose. And then… it kind of changed everything.)