What are your kids doing this summer? We’re now offering a fun and exciting children’s puppetry workshop, in which kids will learn from professional puppeteers (us!), make their own puppets, watch guest performers, create their own shows and perform in the park for friends and family. They’ll receive a professionally recorded DVD of their performances as well as awesome t-shirts.

The workshop, to be held at the home of Stephen and Teresa Gashler (457 W 730 S, Provo, UT 84601) is spread over two weeks of one hour classes and is open to all children. Admission is only $60.

June Workshop

• Jun 29th – Jul 10th, MWF, 1:00 – 2:00
• Jul 10th, 7:00 PM: performance in the park (location TBA)

July Workshop

• Jul 15th – Jul 26th, MWF, 1:00 – 2:00
• Jul 26th, 7:00 PM: performance in the park (location TBA)

August Workshop

• Aug 10th – Aug 21st, MWF, 1:00 – 2:00
• Aug 21st, 7:00 PM: performance in the park (location TBA)

What could be more fun? Don’t miss this incredible opportunity! For more information or to sign up, call 801-494-3440 or email info@yourimaginaryfriends.net.

We finished this extraordinary song, and it only took us two years!

“Dead Chicken Song” is the touching tale about a boy who loses his pet chicken, created by Your Imaginary Friends and Maxed Out Puppetry.

Music by Stephen Gashler – Lyrics by Caitlin Shirts – Produced by Monte (Trance) Emerson – Vocals: Stephen and Teresa Gashler – Guitar: Curtis Wiederhold – Piano: Stephen Gashler – Bass and drums: Freddy Desposorio

Recently we completed a puppetry tour, spanned over the last few weeks, in Provo, Nephi and Davis County. Our performances consisted of a series of puppet shows including “The Mixed Up Fairy,” “Grandpa Goes to the Library,” “Pet the Human,” “The Modest Mermaid,” “The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad TV” and the musical number “Why Don’t We Go Read a Book?” We’d like to especially thank the libraries and children of Davis County for providing great audiences and laughing very loudly, even when our jokes weren’t that funny. Harold the Bird felt especially honored.

Here’s a fun video we made for Steve’s brother’s birthday. It has lots of family inside jokes, but we bet you’ll still like it.

Our first music video. Davey Morrison suffers from Garden Gnome Derangement Syndrome.

Music and Lyrics by Davey Morrison; Photographed by David Thorpe; Edited by Stephen Gashler.

This is a storytelling adaptation from Steve’s play “Codgers in the Night,” which was produced at UVU in 2005 and through New Play Project at the Provo Theater in 2008, winning best of show at both events. If you’d like to see videorecordings of the play, go to blip.tv and search for “codgers in the night.”

Lately we’ve been focusing on recording new music. You can listen to it here. We hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave comments.

We performed two puppet shows: (1) “The Frog Prince” and (2) “Poor Mr. Bobsworth,” a gripping tragedy about an unfortunate lemonade salesman who’s so desperate for business that he hides beneath a bridge for years, waiting for potential clients; in the process, his hair grows very long, and he’s mistaken for a troll, the big, bad, wolf and a horrible beast.

A puppet show, written by Teresa for a Humanities class, loosely inspired by the theme of fleeing from death in the Odyssey.