Last Sunday, at the Puppetmasters workshop at the Hammer Museum, 826LA’s Glasgow Phillips introduced his students to two treasured theatrical forms– puppetry and professional wrestling. The students started by mashing together their hand-puppet alter-egos from socks, gloves, felt, neon duct tape, and toilet scrubbers. After the pre-match carnage (which tends to follow hot glue guns around), we had the pleasure of meeting Pedro the Sparkler, Funny Bob, and Duplicated Funny Bob, among others.

Behind (or is that inside?) each puppet was an appropriately outrageous character to match. In true professional wrestling style, each floppy pugilist spewed fighting words penned by its puppeteer before poking its head into the three-foot, chenille-roped wrestling ring.

In victory or defeat, every puppet took the opportunity to provide backstage smack talk, which, oddly enough, featured both a rendition of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” and a selection from the musical Wicked sung by Team Barbie.

Thanks to Glasgow, the Hammer Museum, and all the 826 volunteers who made this possible. We can’t wait for the next workshop at the Hammer; we hear an eight-year-old may be installing herself as dictator-for-life of the new island nation of Awesometastica.