[dramatic music] - My name is Tarish Pipkins, a.k.a.

Jeghetto.

I'm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

[soothing music] I started building puppets 14 years ago.

I've been in the game.

The thing that got me into puppets, I was always a visual artist.

I was doing these wire sculptures, I called it 3D scribble.

One day I decided to put clothes on one to actually make it move.

So it was a really crude abstract wire puppet with clothes on it.

I named it Adobe Livewire.

I started working with different materials, all recycled, like scrap wood, PVC, and just started developing my craft.

[gentle music] When I'm building a puppet, I notice once it's coming to completion, I actually start talking to them.

Once they get, you know, reach a certain point of development, they actually grow into a personality.

If, you know, say I would drop one, I would actually apologize and speak to the puppet.

You know, tell you I'm sorry.

So, I mean, you know, it might seem a little weird, but they, you know, they're a part of me.

So I consider my puppets an extension of me.

They freak when they see the low frequency.

The Puppet MC made of PVC, best of both worlds.

Hip hop and puppet tree.

Throw your hands up in the air if you're feeling me.

Jeghetto, the puppet maker, my creator, wrote rhymes on the iPad trying to save paper.

One with puppet theater up in here.

We are family.

Let's make that clear.

Kicking that boom bap old school rap.

Whoever would've thought that a puppet would bring it back.

Yo, Rock 'em shock 'em Robot flows red hot.

When it comes to ripping mics, I give it all I got.

They freak when they see the low frequency, the Puppet MC made of PVC.

Yo, they freak when they see the low frequency.

The Puppet MC made of PVC.

[dinosaur roaring] [girl shrieking] [Tarish laughing] My long term goal in puppetry, is to actually own my own puppet theater.

Like have the own building and do workshops with children and have kids do everything from writing plays to building puppets, sale distribution, merchandise.

I just want to teach entrepreneurship to kids through puppetry.

- You want us to cut it right here?

- Lemme see.

Put it on top.

People don't know that puppetry is considered a high art, like composing orchestra or, you know, playing an instrument.

There's a lot involved in it.

Learn something, teach it, pass it along.

Then you move along wherever you go after you die.

[dramatic music] I do have an example of puppetry being like this deep emotional medium too.

I did a show called the Shadow Box.

It was a story, it was a screenplay written in the 70s about a hospice, and there were three families dealing with, you know, a dying family member in a hospice.

So I built the puppets, and the director said, you know what?

Let's not put faces on the puppets.

Let's leave the faces blank.

But we still put hair and clothes on them.

The end of the show audience members were coming up to us after the show.

Like, how did you make that puppet smile?

Or how did you make the puppet frown and cry?

And you know, me and the director looked at each other like, there are no faces on the puppets.

People were so drawn to the story that they projected faces on the puppets.

So things like that happen, and I mean, how can you explain that?

There have been periods in certain societies, especially kingdoms, where puppetry was banned because it was so renegade and against society, basically, against the powers that be.

They would have street performances and say basically there was a king that ruled, and there were puppeteers who were speaking out against that king through puppetry.

And I mean, people were like arrested and executed.

So I'm a rebel.

I'm against oppression.

You know, basically at heart.

I'm an anarchist in the true definition of anarchy, which is no ruler, no slave.

No master, no slave.

The main thing that makes me a good puppeteer is my passion for the art.

I don't stop.

I am puppetry.

[dramatic music]