Brian interviews the Penis Puppeteers
By Brian Nguyen, for THECOMMENTARY.CA Guests: Daniel Lewry and Joey Dixon, Puppetry of the Penis
Thursday, 18 May 2006
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Not so long ago, Brian Nguyen was assigned to review a performance of Puppetry of the Penis, which was making a return appearance in Vancouver. As part of the assignment he interviewed two of the performers. A transcript of the interview follows.)
BRIAN NGUYEN: First of all, who are you, and what do you do?
DANIEL LEWRY: Okay, my name's Dan Lewry, and I'm a penis puppeteer.
JOEY DIXON: My name's Joey Dixon and I'm a penis puppeteer! I've been doing this for three years now. (To Dan) How long have you been doing it?
LEWRY: Uh, I started in about 2001, so, I don't know...since then...
NGUYEN: So you were the first extra hired by Simon and David?
LEWRY: I was the first besides the originals- yeah, I'm the first penis franchise. (Smiles) The first penis extension.
NGUYEN: Did you know the original puppeteers?
LEWRY: No, I auditioned by accident. I used to be a bum puppet, and we used to paint faces on our asses and recreate great scenes from cinema or famous death scenes.
NGUYEN: And you did this for a living?
LEWRY: I didn't do it for a living. I just did it for fun on the side. We went to the auditions to show them our bum puppets, and right at the time, they had to do some television that night in Australia, so they said, 'Anyone do any dick tricks?' My mates said, 'Dan does a few,' so I dropped my pants, did a few tricks, and got the job. It's a real Cinderella story.
DIXON: (Laughing) Those crazy Australians. I was reading the newspaper in my hometown of Denver, Colorado and saw the call for the audition. I had nothing better to do, so I decided to go down and get my dick out.
LEWRY: That happens with most puppeteers.
DIXON: Yeah.
LEWRY: Most find they haven't anything better to do.
NGUYEN: Did you know any tricks beforehand?
DIXON: You know, I knew the spitting cobra, but they wouldn't let me do that one in the audition. I was hopped up on cold medicine, so I almost didn't go that day because I was practically non-verbal. It really wasn't an issue.
LEWRY: It wasn't that much of a difference.
DIXON: No.
NGUYEN: So you'd never seen any of the original shows?
DIXON: No, I had no idea what it was. A lot of people had seen it on HBO at this point, but I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. (Laughs)
LEWRY: Neither did I. I did dick tricks 'cause it's a tradition. It's a locker room thing. It's always good to play on your friends.
NGUYEN: So what were the auditions like?
LEWRY: It was basically: you had to get up on stage, drop your pants, and show off a few tricks- a few that you knew, and they talked you through a few other tricks. And that was pretty much it; it wasn't very difficult. It wasn't Shakespeare. (Grins)
NGUYEN: So how much contact do you have with Simon and David?
LEWRY: I talk to them quite a bit because I'm from Melbourne, and that's where they're both from. So I see Friendy all the time. The Melbourne Comedy Festival's on, so I saw him only a few days ago, and I speak to Simon every now and then on the phone.
DIXON: You know, every once and awhile, I touch base with Friendy. I worked with Friendy in Chicago a couple years back, and he likes to, you know, make sure that we're keeping up appearances- representing well, if there is such a possibility. (Pause) He just had a baby!
LEWRY: Yeah he did have a baby. So 'it' still works.
NGUYEN: So how much creative freedom do you guys have over your own performances?
LEWRY: Well, with the dialogue, most of all, you can always talk to the audience and ad-lib a bit, and have a bit of fun, but the tricks, the tricks are pretty standard, and don't really change too much.
DIXON: No, I've never seen a trick added. I can't think of anything that we don't do!
LEWRY: Oh there's a few silly ones that you get, like, the Mary Lou Retton, and the swollen thumb.
DIXON: Oh, the swollen thumb's good!
NGUYEN: Do you make up your own tricks, or do you have to talk to Simon and David?
LEWRY: Well, if there's anything that's good, you do show your friends and Simon and David, and ask, 'What do you think?' If it's passable, or if it's a good trick, it's in the show. But most times, there's only so much you can do with a penis and a couple of testicles, and I think we've pretty much stretched our limits.
DIXON: And the thing about it is, anything you do come up with automatically becomes property of "Puppetry of the Penis".
LEWRY: That's right.
DIXON: Fortunately, by the time I've come up with it, I don't want it anymore anyway, so they can have it.
LEWRY: And you do have to keep some sort of mystery. (Laughter)
NGUYEN: Who do you think is the most talented performer?
DIXON: Between the two of us?
NGUYEN: Anyone, actually.
LEWRY: Out of all the dick trickers?
DIXON: All the dick trickers?
LEWRY: Well, Friendy can do the no-dick.
DIXON: Friendy's gotta be it. I mean, I've never worked with Simon, but Friendy does tricks that no one else on Earth can do.
LEWRY: He puts his penis back inside himself and it stays there.
DIXON: Some congenital birth defect.
LEWRY: That's odd. I've seen one other person do it. I used to work with a guy called Steve Harrison, and he used to be able to do it. So that's about it. See, Friendy takes his dick tricking very seriously. I think he plays with himself more than any man on Earth.
NGUYEN: So, what talents are required for genital origami?
LEWRY: Flexibility, a lack of shame, and...what else do we need?
DIXON: Yeah, I think that you have to completely not take yourself seriously. If you do, at all, your career in this business will be rather short, so to speak.
LEWRY: Another thing that's required is warmth.
DIXON: Yeah, warmth is very nice.
LEWRY: Very nice.
DIXON: We didn't have that at our last two venues!
LEWRY: No, they were pretty cold.
DIXON: They were in Alberta.
NGUYEN: How many hours of practice do you put in?
DIXON: Well, now, I think that's a bit personal!
LEWRY: Well, once you've got the tricks, it's like riding a bike. You don't forget them, really. If I haven't done it for awhile, I can do it in the shower. The shower's the best place 'cause it's warm. See if I can still do it, work on my technique.
DIXON: Do you use soap?
LEWRY: No, I don't use soap.
NGUYEN: What are your favorite shapes?
LEWRY: Um, I like the 'Other Woman'. It's really disturbing.
DIXON: Why is it that you love the 'Other Woman'?
LEWRY: It's 'cause it shocks the hell out of people. That's basically when you make your scrotum look like a woman's vagina, with labium, and clitoris, and the works. And the classic, the 'Hamburger'. Everyone loves the 'Hamburger'.
DIXON: You know, last night, your 'Other Woman' was spectacular!
LEWRY: Oh it was good, wasn't it? It worked really well.
DIXON: It was amazing! Uh, you know what my favorite is?
LEWRY: What?
DIXON: I like the 'Loch Ness Monster' more than any other trick in the entire show.
LEWRY: Really? I love the moving tricks- like, Nessie goes into a moving trick-
DIXON: Yeah.
LEWRY: -and then the sea anemone, and the turtle.
DIXON: (Laughs) The turtle!
LEWRY: The hairy-back turtle. Moving tricks are always good.
NGUYEN: Do you think women can get involved in genital origami?
DIXON: Well-
LEWRY: Pardon the pun, but they can do cunt stunts. But at the moment, in Australia, there's a show called 'Dance of the D-Cups', where there's actually women making shapes with their breasts. But I don't know about genitals.
DIXON: Breasts count, don't they?
LEWRY: Genitals? Well, I don't know...
DIXON: Well, they're erogenous!
LEWRY: They are, but they're also...uh... (Shrugs)
DIXON: You know, I'd just like to point out that, um, in Australia, they have 'Puppetry of the Penis', they have bum, what?
LEWRY: Puppets.
DIXON: Bum puppets, and now they have...
LEWRY: Breast puppetry. That's puppetry of the D-cups, or something.
DIXON: 'Dance of the D-Cups'.
LEWRY: Yep, there's one.
DIXON: That's lovely. You know, if it weren't for you Australians, I wouldn't have had any work for the last three years.
LEWRY: That's right! It takes a love for getting naked. But I suppose women could always shoot ping pong balls or something like that. I don't know. What could you do? You could make it look like a clam, or an abalone.
DIXON: There was a woman in Denver who evidently showed quite a few tricks. Without going into too much detail, she, um, was very limber.
LEWRY: There was one lady who came up to another puppeteer in Australia after a show, and she could do quite a few tricks with her labia. She could pull them out and she could do a windsurfer and stuff like that, and he [the puppeteer] took some photos and he showed all us guys, and we were like, 'Holy shit!' It wasn't pretty.
NGUYEN: Do you think it would be commercially viable?
LEWRY: I don't know, I guess, um, the genitals are very different- theirs are internal, ours are external.
DIXON: You know, I think that some of it has to do with the mindset of the audience, in combination with the sheer silliness of the male genitalia. I mean, the male genitalia- the penis and the testicles- are pretty stupid looking.
LEWRY: They are.
DIXON: Pretty darn stupid looking. And, you know, our audience does tend to be predominantly female, so I think they come in with a mindset a little more open to the fact that it's not a sex show. There is no titillation. I've got a little bit of a beer belly, and Dan's got a pimple on his ass, and you realize rather quickly that it's all in good fun. I don't know if you could overcome that hurdle in a show that featured female genitalia.
LEWRY: I mean, you'd get a lot of men in trenchcoats, I think. But if you leave that out, then why not? I'd pay to see it. It wouldn't bother me.
NGUYEN: I was reading this blog the other day, where someone commented that this show helps to objectify men. How would you respond to this?
(Stunned silence for a few seconds.)
DIXON: (Laughing) Did you really read that?
NGUYEN: Yes.
DIXON: God, we hear so many bizarre things. You know, if you're asking a philosophical question, my answer would be that nothing could be further from the truth, and obviously, that this person who wrote this blog has never seen the show before, because he never would have written anything like that. If anything, if this show does any good, in the greater sense of the word- I think the thing about the penis and what's attached to that in our cultural psyche- um, the penis has caused a lot of damage over the millenia, and I think that this show, if nothing else, kind of puts it in its proper perspective. It's just a rather silly-looking bunch of flesh that, um, we've found something new and interesting and completely harmless that you can do with it.
LEWRY: Well, if you could do it with your ears, then we'd do it with our ears. If we could do it with our hands, then we'd do it with our hands. But we can't. We do it with our genitals. It just happens to be there. As he said, it's a piece of flesh that just happens to be used for sex.
NGUYEN: Have you ever had to defend yourselves against critics?
LEWRY: Uh, not really. Not at all. No, I mean, the show is what it is. You can't really attack it on many levels. It's just basically two blokes on stage playing with their penises.
DIXON: You know, the show's critics haven't seen the show. The only honest, negative criticism that I've ever heard is that it's just a little too stupid for some people's tastes. That's about the worst thing you can honestly say about the show after having seen it.
LEWRY: And we have had bad reviews sometimes when we're doing the show and stuff, but the reviewers never write about the audience- they love it! They're always pissing their pants laughing.
DIXON: Yeah.
LEWRY: Well, we know what we're doing is not Shakespeare, let's put it that way. (Laughter)
NGUYEN: Do you have any groupies?
LEWRY: No, never. People think, oh, you get naked on stage and it's going to help you pick up, but it doesn't at all. There's no mystery anymore- they've seen it, they've heard it, they're sick of it. It doesn't work at all.
DIXON: It's pitiful, nobody- I've never been picked up. And I want to be picked up! (Laughter) But, yeah, I don't know. The closest thing I've ever had to a groupie was in Philidelphia a couple of years ago. We had a guy who came to see the show nineteen times in a row! (Laughter)
LEWRY: God...
DIXON: He wanted to get up on stage. He wanted to be a puppeteer, which is why he spent his retirement savings, evidently, on 'Puppetry of the Penis' tickets. We got to know him; he'd put his hand up: "I want to go on stage!" - no Jack, you just stay there. You stay there tonight, Jack!
LEWRY: So no, no groupies. I received a letter once. (Mimicking a female voice) "I really liked your show!" (Laughter)
NGUYEN: Final question: what do you think about the war in Iraq?
LEWRY: The war in Iraq- I think it's horrendous. It's hideous, it's unjust. (To Joey) Do you agree?
DIXON: Yeah, I would agree. You know, I'm from Wyoming, where I think it's illegal to drive a vehicle without some kind of yellow ribbon sticker on the back. Um, so I must be breaking some law, because I don't have one. I would say, though, that I agree: we need to bring our troops home.
LEWRY: But the thing is, they've made such a mess over there, they've got to finish it somehow. Don't forget, my country is over there as well. You know, they've made such a mess, they've got to fix it somehow and get the hell out of there. It was wrong in the first place- they went in for the wrong reasons, they lied, and these people are still in government. George Bush is still in government, John Howard is still in government- people still voted for them. God, they're all stupid. (Nervous laughter)
DIXON: Oh my goodness. I don't think that you want political commentary from penis puppeteers.
NGUYEN: Well, I just wanted to keep you guys on your toes.
DIXON: (Laughter) There you go! We do one bit of political humour in the show that, um, you may like. You're coming to see the show, right?
NGUYEN: Yeah.
DIXON: Yeah, that's really our commentary on the whole thing. You'll see it.
LEWRY: Yeah.
NGUYEN: Well, that was the final question. Thanks for giving me the interview.
LEWRY: No worries. Thank you!
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