*How a South Euclid kid grew up to become one of the world’s foremost Muppet experts* By Joey Morona, cleveland.com “The Magic of the Muppets” with Joe Hennes will take place at 4 p.m., Saturday, May 30, at the Irishtown Bend Taproom, 1849 W. 24th Street, Cleveland. Tickets are $20 and available at clickgobuynow.com/jwp. The multi-media show is approximately 2 hours long. It is aimed at adults, but it is safe for kids. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Muppets appear to be on the brink of another resurgence. A special episode of “The Muppet Show” featuring Sabrina Carpenter drew nearly 8 million viewers in its first few days on ABC and Disney+ in February, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in New York City recently opened for tours, and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring the Muppets is now thrilling tourists at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida. It’s enough to make you say, “Wocka, wocka!” Just ask Joe Hennes. The South Euclid native has spent the better part of two decades immersed in all things Muppets as editor-in-chief of ToughPigs.com, the authoritative website for adult fans of the franchise. “Somebody’s got to do it, right?” Hennes said. “Why not a kid from Cleveland?” On Saturday, Hennes will present “The Magic of the Muppets,” a TED Talk-style event exploring the life, career and legacy of Henson, at the Irishtown Bend Taproom in Ohio City. “It’s going to be a microcosm of some of the best, most interesting and most important Muppet content from over the years,” said Hennes. “But there’s also a throughline about creativity and inspiration that I’m really excited to share with everybody because that’s really what Jim’s greatest strength was.” But how exactly did Hennes, also an editor for Random House Children’s Books, become one of the foremost Muppets experts in the world? Like many from his generation, he grew up on “Sesame Street.” But as kids his age moved on to other things, Hennes never stopped watching. He followed Henson’s creations to “The Muppet Show” and the big screen, then fell into a rabbit hole that included the puppeteer’s early work in advertising and fantasy films like “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth.” Hennes eventually moved to New York City to pursue a career in children’s media. “I found a whole community of people who felt just like I did,” he said. That included Danny Horn, the founder of ToughPigs (www.toughpigs.com) . When Horn left in 2005, Hennes and his friend Ryan Roe took over. Since then, the site has published thousands of articles and produced hundreds of podcast episodes. Hennes has moderated panels at comic-cons and interviewed Frank Oz (the voice of Miss Piggy), Caroll Spinney (the man behind Big Bird) and Kermit the Frog himself. When Fathom Events brought “The Muppet Movie” back to theaters for its 45th anniversary in 2024, Hennes recorded the introduction. His work on ToughPigs, which Hennes characterizes as a labor of love rather than a money-making venture, has given him a front-row seat to why the Muppets inspire such devotion, even as the fandom has been tested over the years. Unlike “Star Wars,” Marvel or Pixar, the Muppets have never been a billion-dollar franchise for Disney, and fans have sometimes felt the brand has been pushed aside in favor of bigger properties. But Hennes says the Muppets have always had something those franchises can’t manufacture: the ability to work on multiple levels at once — silly enough for small children, strange enough for older kids and nostalgic enough for the adults who grew up with them. “We know that Muppets can be a really successful franchise,” he said. “It seems like they are on this upward trajectory that I’m really excited to be riding on.” It wasn’t always like that. Hennes got a firsthand look at the challenges facing the IP during nearly a decade working at Sesame Workshop in the 2010s. His feelings about his time there are “complicated,” he said. While it was cool to see “how the sausage gets made,” he ultimately left frustrated. “The trouble I came into with Sesame Workshop was wanting to be a part of the creative process and help both push it in a new direction and remind the company where its roots were,” he said. “A lot of the people at Sesame Workshop who are currently running the show could stand to use a little reminder.” Still, he looks back fondly at his favorite project there. Hennes wrote a parody of the movie “Birdman” starring Big Bird and Spinney, who appeared in the sketch as himself. (You can see this short parody by clicking here <https://youtu.be/lnfAxUjRQAo?si=DdrZ9tIz9_VPvj-L>. “It’s like getting to work with one of the Beatles,” Hennes recalled. “It doesn’t get any better than that.” His interactions with Spinney, members of the Henson family and current and former staff at the Jim Henson Company have unlocked unique insight into and appreciation for the man behind the Muppets. He learned that Henson’s superpower, beyond his creative genius, might have been his ability to create a positive working environment where employees felt valued and heard. “He really encouraged Frank Oz, the closest thing he had to a creative partner, to follow his dream of being a film director, which meant working on non-Henson properties,” Hennes said. “To do that, he would say to him, ‘I’ll work with you on a movie or I’ll help you make connections.’” For Henson, it was about figuring out how to create and keep the inspiration moving forward without getting too complacent. That message is the heart of Hennes’ “The Magic of the Muppets” talk. “It’s a tricky balance,” he said. “Jim was able to ride that line in a beautiful way that I think that we can all find a little inspiration in as we look toward whatever our next creative endeavors might be.”