There (probably) aren’t monsters under your bed, but you’re sure to see some spooky creatures at Cirque du Horror, the Halloween variety show that takes place under the big top during Denton’s Day of the Dead Festival this weekend.
Composer and festival director David J. Pierce, who created the homegrown Halloween musical in 2009 and works with myriad artists to bring his songs to life, reached out to a local team to create larger-than-life monsters in 2022. They’ve been making puppets for Cirque du Horror ever since.
Each year, NTX Creature Shop creates a large monster puppet that’s used in a performance in the variety show. The group was founded by Brenden Shipp, who also acts as head engineer and puppeteer.
“It started [as] just a hobby,” Shipp said.
He started off creating puppet designs in his free time with Ethan Moreno, now the lead fabricator and puppeteer for NTX Creature Shop.
“[We started by] getting together, playing with some modeling clay and figuring out different creature designs,” Moreno said.
Along with creating designs just for fun, they also lent their talents to University of North Texas students who were making short films. They also do special effects, prosthetics and prop work, in addition to making puppets.
NTX Creature Shop is a passion project for those involved, but they’re looking to expand and take on more projects next year — for example, they said they plan to work with Denton-based horror-inspired band Visceral Cuts on special effects for its live show.
Pierce was looking for a specific creature for Cirque du Horror in 2022, the year the musical graduated from the stage inside Dan’s Silverleaf to a real big-top circus tent on East Hickory Street.
“He had gone to a different company and said, ‘Hey, I want a 10-foot-tall, dancing, singing skeleton,’” said Panda Dodson, lead artist and puppeteer with NTX Creature Shop. “And they said that they weren’t going to be able to do that. And so he reached out to us, and we love a challenge.”
The group created the skeleton and named him Napoleon. Onstage for Cirque, they used their puppeteering skills to make him dance to a song called Clickety Clack alongside human dancers dressed as skeletons.
The three core members of NTX Creature Shop each play a critical role in a puppet’s design.
“My main role is designing the mechanisms [that control] the way the puppets move,” Shipp said. “Everything underneath the felt, I’ve put together.”
He works with Moreno to come up with designs, with Moreno ensuring all of the mechanisms work on a logistical level. Then, Dodson adds paint and other aesthetic details to bring the creature to life.
For Cirque du Horror this year, they’ve created an 8 1/2-foot-tall goblin puppet. This creature not only moves around0, but also is the group’s first puppet to have animatronic features.
Part of the reason the group was able to put together a more complex design is because they added two fabricators/puppeteers to the team: Emma Ricks and Jaxson Narvaez.
“[The goblin puppet] walks along a track,” Shipp said. “And for that, Ethan [holds] two cables that ... raise the puppet up. Jaxson moves the legs and keeps the back supported. And then Panda and Emma each take an arm. And I’m offstage with a remote control, controlling the face.”