Where to find Audrey puppets in Australia?
AKA Audrey 2, Audrey II, Audrey two puppets
The Little Shop of Horrors is an extremely popular musical, performed regularly by Australian amateur theatre groups. So it’s usual that someone is always out there looking for Audrey puppets. But amazingly enough, they’re hard to find. So here’s some tips that will help you find them. (Please note: this post refers mainly to Australian performing groups/puppetry companies, but the following can be done for international people; just exchange any reference to an Australian organisation to your local organisations)
(Image courtesy of DruryDrama/Flickr)
Contact other groups
Because this is a popular performance, a lot of small amateur groups will have produced the show before. Don’t reinvent the wheel; find out who else has produced the show in your area, and see if they have any Audrey puppets they can hire out, lend, or if they have a contact that does have them. A good site to find local theatre groups in your area is Theatre Australia.
Also, the following links list people who sell Audrey puppets: Hal Leonard lists a NSW school that hires out the puppets (search for Audrey, it’s at the bottom of the page); this thread from Theatre Australia discusses hiring the puppets in QLD; Fraser Coast Anglican College (also QLD) has some for hire. This one is old, but is about Audreys for hire in VIC.
Contact UNIMA
Contact UNIMA Australia, the Australian organisation of puppeteers, who can point you in the right direction of a hirer, builder, or designer. You may also want to check out Puppetry Australia. You can also check out my post on ‘where to find puppet makers in Australia‘.
Make it yourself
Although it’s US-based, there’s a lot of Aussie puppeteers on the Puppets and Stuff forums - but the site is better for if you want to make the puppets yourself. This thread follows on one of the US puppet makers creating an Audrey II. With a little insight and hard work, you and/or your props department could easily build your own. And if you’re worried about the cost, just think of this: if Audrey puppets are so hard to find, you can always hire them out to other groups to recoup your costs.
There’s also a great website called the Audrey II Rental Homepage, which lists info for around the world on where to hire the puppets. There’s a lot of other useful info on how to stage the show, building advice, etc. UPDATE 4/5/10: The site seems to be no longer available, which is a pity as it covered a lot of good stuff (if you know where it’s gone to, or if the site is still active, please let me know). In the meantime, those in the US may wish to check out these sites: Audrey 2.com, based in Florida; and Swazzle’s very 
amazing Audrey Two.com. The latter site is good for those of whom want some inspiration and ideas of how Audrey puppets work and look.
Why not just buy it somewhere?
Audrey puppets aren’t easy to sell; you have a limited marketing audience, mainly made up of small amateur groups, who don’t often have big budgets for buying puppets. Especially puppets that aren’t generic enough to warrant reuse in other shows. So you’re probably not going to find Audreys in your local puppet store, or sold by online puppet dealers. Therefore your best bet of finding the puppets is via the above info, rather than heading to a puppet seller. However, your local puppet store/seller may have some contacts for those who do provide Audreys. Check out my post on ‘where to buy and hire puppets‘ for a list of sellers, or the one on puppet repairers.
Want more? Help build a puppet!