Ben Green does not have a drinking problem, no matter what his online comedy videos show. Ben Green can’t have a drinking problem. Ben is a puppet created by Jamaica Plain resident Pam Severns.
Puppet Ben Green and his buddy and roommate Eric explore Jamaica Plain’s bars and galleries, celebrate Christmas at the Monument and compete over the same girl in their series of videos, hosted at the well-known comedy site funnyordie.com.
The “Ben & Eric” videos, featuring Ben the puppet and Severns’s friend, Eric Mearns, started with a puppeteering class. Severns had to make a video with the theme of “loss,” using a green faceless puppet.
“I thought that it would be funny to have the puppet go out to local bars with his buddy after being dumped by his girlfriend, drink too much, and pass out,” Severns said. “Eric seemed like the right guy to play the part of Ben’s friend/roommate and we had so much fun filming that we decided to keep making new episodes.”
Another “Ben & Eric” episode has the duo exploring JP’s First Thursday art event while shopping for art for their bathroom. “Ben & Eric” used UFORGE Gallery, the Hallway Gallery and Room 68 for locations. They’ve also celebrated Christmas and competed over a girl named Ginger.
“I love the alternate universe that is created when you put puppets in an entirely human setting and everybody acts naturally, as if people and puppets coexist every day. I think Jim Henson was one of the first artists to do that, and I think there’s something inherently funny about it,” Severns said.
Jim Henson was the creator of the Muppets and a world-renowned puppeteer.
There’s another episode in production—about Ben and Eric’s “boring office jobs,” Severns said. She’s also considering crowd-funding a short film.
“I would love to create something that can be submitted to film festivals. Eric and I also have a few non-puppet comedy sketches planned that I’m pretty excited about,” she said. “I can only hope that more and more people will discover and share our Ben & Eric videos. If we’re lucky, Internet puppet videos will become as popular as Internet cat videos!”
Off the Internet, Severns works as at a Brookline bed and breakfast and an illustrator while Mearns is a tour guide at JP’s Sam Adams Brewery, Severns told the Gazette.
Four “Ben & Eric” videos are available to watch at funnyordie.com/pam_made_this.