Learn to count and practice moving your fingers with Zietta Elissa, her clever monster friend Moss and a fun-loving crew from Larrikin Puppets.
Help Zietta and Moss put the baby to sleep by singing along to the classic Five Finger Family song with a fun puppet finger family, including Daddy Finger (Troggg), Mummy Finger (Flossy), Brother Finger (Scrambles), Sister Finger (Marina), and Baby Finger (New Baby)!
Larrikin Puppets loves it when you sing along and move your fingers too – children and their grown ups together!
Lyrics: Five Finger Family Song | Baby Finger
Daddy finger, Daddy finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Mummy finger, Mummy finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Brother finger, Brother finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Sister finger, Sister finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Baby finger, Baby finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do?
Between all of our private bookings at schools, childcare centres, disability organisations, and corporates, we have some PUBLIC events coming up! Join us in Mapleton, Annerley, Middle Park, and Chuwar! All welcome!
Since 2012, Larrikin Puppets has been bringing laughter, songs, and fun to kids and families everywhere! When we’re not performing at schools or childcare centres, you can find us at exciting public events like festivals, libraries, theatres, shopping centres, Bunnings stores, and even pubs. These shows are extra special because families get to experience the magic together—kids, parents, and grandparents all enjoying the laughter, songs, and zany puppet antics.
One of the big stars in our shows is Freerange the Chicken, who never fails to get the crowd laughing with his funny act! Freerange is a definite favourite, always keeping everyone entertained and on their toes. And of course, after each show, Troggg and Marina love meeting families for high-fives, hugs, and photos, which creates happy memories for everyone.
Our performances are packed with catchy original songs, like “Dance Like a Unicorn” and “I Know All The Things,” which families can also enjoy on Spotify and Apple Music. We secretly hope that our tunes become the soundtrack of the ride home, letting everyone take a bit of the puppet magic with them! And at Christmas time, our puppets perform many sing-along seasonal favourites!
After our shows, we love chatting with parents, grandparents, and carers. Hearing feedback and seeing smiles lets us know that everyone had a great time. We also like to share exciting news about our latest projects, like our upcoming TV series pilot, and invite families to join us online on our website, YouTube, and social media for even more puppetry fun.
If you’re in Mapleton, Annerley, Middle Park, or Chuwar, we’d love for you to join us at one of these upcoming public puppet shows! Bring your whole family for a fun, colourful experience filled with songs, laughs, and puppet friends. We can’t wait to see you there!
You can catch Larrikin Puppets performing at the 2024 Gympie Music Muster on the Mini Main Stage in the Kids Country Area. Sunday 25 August, 2024. Puppet Show at 10am, Puppetry Performance Workshop at 12pm, and then another Puppet Show at 2pm.
Our puppet show is a lively, interactive comedy packed with colorful skits, jokes, games, dancing, and original songs like “Dance Like A Unicorn,” which you might have heard on Spotify, Apple Music, Kinderling, or ABC Kids Listen. At the end, we reveal the magic behind our puppets!
The 45-minute show is a big hit with younger children, especially those under 7, thanks to its engaging themes of kindness, creative play, and the joy of puppetry. It’s a crowd-pleaser that always brings smiles and laughter, and we reckon families at the Gympie Music Muster will get a big kick out of it!
Our puppet show was awarded “Best Kids Live Show” at the national What’s On 4 Kids Awards in 2021.
For older kids, our Puppetry Performance Workshop is a fantastic option. This hands-on workshop dives into Muppet-style puppetry, where students learn about lip sync, eye focus, movement, and character voices. With 50 professional puppets available, it’s a great way for students to build confidence, improve communication skills, and have a blast!
The 1-hour workshop starts with a short puppet show to demonstrate puppet performance and includes an educational talk about different puppetry styles. It’s engaging for ages 8 and up, and even teenagers find it exciting. Learning how to perform with Muppet-style puppets is a first for the Gympie Music Muster.
Our workshop won the People’s Choice Award for “Best School Aged Activity (Ages 5-12)” at the national What’s On 4 Kids Awards in 2021.
We’ve had the incredible honour of partnering with ROPE Inc, a remarkable non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering people with intellectual disabilities through education, life skills training, and community-based programs. Their mission to “Ignite the Courage to be Extraordinary” truly shines in everything they do.
Over the years, Larrikin Puppets has been privileged to join ROPE Inc at their annual camps at the Bribie Island Retreat and Recreation Centre in Woorim. These camps are always a blast, filled with themed puppet shows that bring joy and laughter to everyone involved. From spooky Halloween shows to delightful Willy Wonka-themed evenings complete with a chocolate fountain, each camp is a unique and magical experience.
One unforgettable moment was when Troggg the blue monster was the emcee at the ROPE Inc AGM, featuring the inspirational Olivia Hargroder from Change The Box as guest speaker. Olivia, known for her advocacy work and her appearance on the reality TV series Better Date Than Never, has been a beacon of hope and change.
During the challenging times of the COVID-19 lockdowns, ROPE Inc’s generosity and commitment to their community shone brightly. They continued to engage Larrikin Puppets for online Zoom puppet shows and even puppet-hosted Bingo games, ensuring that their clients stayed entertained and connected.
A special highlight was our appearance on the first birthday episode of ROPE TV, filmed at the wonderful studio of Trending Media Australia. Puppet characters Troggg and Marina co-hosted the episode, and Brett Hansen and Elissa Jenkins shared insights into how Muppet-style puppets work, making it an educational and fun segment for all viewers. We are grateful for our ongoing collaboration with ROPE Inc and look forward to creating more magical moments together! 🌟 #ROPEInc #LarrikinPuppets #DisabilitySupport #CommunityLove #PuppetryMagic #InclusiveMedia
It’s been a massive year for Larrikin Puppets, full of live performances, workshops and touring.
2023 began with final puppet footage being filmed for the HILARIOUS 8-episode comedy series “IT’S A CULT!” by Cheeky Moon. Our own Brett Hansen performed the puppetry of Professor James Gilmour in one episode, plus a singing, dancing end credit sequence. The series premiered in a movie length screening at New Farm Cinemas in early February. It’s such a funny, quirky and heartwarming series (and we’re not just saying that!). Well worth a watch.
Our puppet shows and workshops for the year began with some Vacation Care/OSHC visits in January before Term 1 kicked off with several Childcare Centre visits.
Our first short tour of the year was in early February. A trip down to Coffs Harbour to run a Puppetry Performance Workshop for the CHATS Productions Inc. cast of Avenue Q. The CHATS (Coffs Harbour Amateur Theatre Society) production of Avenue Q was the fifth one we’d worked with. We always really appreciate when theatre companies look to puppeteers to provide training for their cast of actors, many who haven’t used puppets before. Puppetry is a type of acting and deserves to be done well.
While in Coffs Harbour we performed our puppet show for kids and families at Bunnings Coffs Harbour. We’ve performed at many Bunnings stores over the years, so it was great to treat the locals in the area with a fun puppet show while we were passing through.
By mid February, the primary school bookings had begun for us, so we spent the rest of February visiting many primary schools and childcare centres, plus one birthday party. Receiving positive feedback makes our hearts sing!
“That was hands down the best incursion I’ve ever experienced.” – Year 1 teacher
March was similarly full of school performances, but with the addition of a very special performance at The Brisbane Synagogue at The Jewish Festival of Purim. This was our first time visiting a synagogue, where we were given a lovely tour before the puppet show. We also did our annual day of performances at South Bank Parklands for Kids Collective, with hundreds of children and families attending. Such enjoyable shows there.
We went on a short break in late March/early April down to Melbourne to enjoy the Melbourne International Comedy Festival before immediately starting back upon our return with Easter puppet shows, more vacation care/OSHC performances, a library performance and a huge festival called the ImagiNation Children’s Festival at the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct. At the festival we performed our puppet show inside the Butterbox Theatre, which is the same theatre where we performed our production of Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show in 2022. We LOVED performing in the theatre and the audience was NEXT LEVEL wonderful. We even had a Dad and his kids return to see us there after seeing us perform the week before at a library!
In April, for the first time ever, we launched our Film and TV Monitor Puppetry Workshop for High School students! The first school to enjoy this workshop was Tamborine Mountain State High School on Tuesday 18 April, 2023. And then we presented the same workshop at St Eugene College in Burpengary on Monday 17 July, 2023. We received our film and TV monitor puppetry training in the USA, and now we teach film students here in Australia. We would like to run these workshops in more high schools, as well as universities and TAFE colleges. Most Australian film makers have not been trained to work with monitors for the filming of puppets, so that’s where we come in.
Throughout this year, we’ve worked with music producer Aaron Shanahan from Imagine Music (formerly Sunny Island Music) to record two new songs – “Party Hat” (written for us by Liam McAlary from Yeah Nah) and “I Like How I Look, Think, Feel” (coming soon to Spotify).
This has been a year where we’ve been pretty popular at special schools – Goodna Special School, Maryborough Special School, Logan City Special School and TWO visits to Western Suburbs Special School (Inala). These kids are so much fun and we find these gigs very rewarding.
In Stanthorpe, we had a RECORD SET by one of our fans! One 4-year old girl and her father attended our show 5 times over 3 days! It was so surreal! We also had another 9-year old girl attend a 3rd show because she kept missing the first 5 minutes of our show. Her Mum said we were the only reason they came back on Day 3. So fun.
For the first time in a good few years, we presented our two-day Island Puppetry Workshop & Play Jam on Bribie Island where we’re based. And once again, folks came from far and wide to learn puppetry for stage and screen, and to jam and have a great time with puppets on the weekend of 17-18 June, 2023.
While the workshop was attended mostly by adults seeking professional development, we were particularly excited about 12 year old Sam joining us. He was so very talented and passionate. We hope he keeps up his puppetry skills! Sam saw us perform at a corporate Christmas puppet show in 2019 and has been hooked on puppetry ever since.
Months and months later, people on social media are still talking about our school holiday puppet show at The Village Redcliffe. The retirement village in Rothwell invited all of the grandchildren and great nephews and nieces to join the residents for a jolly good time in the community centre dining room. Much fun was had by all!
In addition to our tours to Coffs Harbour, Rockhampton and Stanthorpe, we also performed some shows in Dalby, Childers and Gin Gin, as well as an EPIC three week tour of puppet shows in Central and North Queensland throughout late September and early October! Beginning with shows in Hervey Bay, Maryborough and Bundaberg, we travelled all the way up north to perform shows in Cairns, Townsville, Burdekin (Ayr), the Whitsundays (Bowen, Collinsville, Cannonvale, Proserpine), and Mackay. Every audience on our tour was so unique and so special to us. We even made a new 2 1/2 year old fan from Townsville who apparently can’t stop talking about Troggg and his friends – and has been practicing her puppeteering ever since!
One of our biggest achievements of this year was presenting a TEDx talk at TEDx Brisbane. TED conferences (Technology, Entertainment, Design) are huge conferences where influential people make inspirational speeches about their areas of expertise and big ideas. TEDx conferences are independent versions of TED, which are run all over the world. In the lead up to the big event, billboards with the image of Elissa and Troggg were displayed all over Brisbane. We presented our talk about puppets on Saturday 14 October, 2023. A video of our talk will hopefully be released online in 2024.
As I write this, we are in our final week of performances for 2023, as we are heading to Europe to enjoy a snowy Winter Christmas. A once in a lifetime opportunity to get away from the Queensland Summer heat and humidity to experience the magic we hear, see and read about in all the Christmas songs, movies and books.
We didn’t do any major collaborations this year. You might remember we’ve worked with such high rollers as Regurgitator, Todd Sampson, Chef Jason Roberts and Illy. But we have some great experiences lined up for 2024. We can’t wait!
This has been a really action packed year that has felt very quick! Thanks to all who supported Larrikin Puppets this year!
Discover our suite of NEW THEMED shows for Childcare & Primary School incursions. And we now even have a NEW puppetry program for High Schools and Higher Education (Universities/TAFEs). And best of all, we come to you!
Did you know Grogu (Baby Yoda) from The Mandalorian is a hand and rod puppet? Did you know very few filmmakers in Australia know how puppets are filmed? For Higher Education, we’re stoked to launch our Puppetry Workshops for Stage (live theatre) and Screen (Film & TV) to university and college students of Drama, Theatre and Screen Production. If you’re a lecturer of Drama or Film, please be in touch. Or pass the info on to lecturers you might know! A Higher Education Info Pack and Rate Card is available.
We write with two exciting updates about Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show. We have a launch date and a theatre, finally and at last! And the show now has a dedicated space on Facebook and on Instagram.
Thanks to generous support from Logan City Council, we will be premiering Hijabi Girl during 2022 Book Week on August 23, 24, 25 at the Butterbox Theatre at the new Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct. Yay!
In late May/early June we’ll also be doing a two-week artist-in-residence at Logan Entertainment Centre to rehearse and refine the show. It was originally going to be at the Butterbox Theatre, but sadly the launch of the new theatre has been delayed due to damage from recent wet weather events in South-East Queensland.
Your patience and support throughout this prolonged creative development process means so much to us. Who knew, when we first started this together, that so many barriers to progress would come our way. The silver lining is that the show will now be bigger and better than we first conceived it would be. At least, we hope so! 🙂
This is primarily a show for early primary children – ages 6-9 – and we’ll be encouraging school groups to attend. For some children, with excursions cancelled for the last few years, this will not only be their first puppet show but perhaps even their first in-theatre show.
Monday, 28 September 2020: From this week, three of our new kids songs – Dance Like A Unicorn, You Can Be Kind and I Know All The Things – will be playing on Little Rockers Radio, a social enterprise radio station for kids aged 6 and under plus their parents and carers. We’re a little bit excited here at Larrikin Puppets!!! And by a little we actually mean a lot!
We’ve been having fun on TikTok lately using characters from Larrikin Puppets to mime along to popular soundbites there. Here’s Flossy doing the Elsa call, and then Troggg with his response. Please follow @larrikinpuppets on TikTok and join in on all the fun!
