I am a little confused by your statement are you saying that if we copy the exact characters that you have then I could see the copyright issues......however I have seen this style of puppet many times before in puppetry books of many decades ago?  This concept is not new.....however your copyrighted characters and personalities and show are yours to own.  However you might have tweaked it to add you own twist to the illusion.  I wish you luck with your performance, they are great characters and nicely developed.

I just want clarification as I said above because there are books with this concept I am sure older than most people.....I have also seen these type of illusions at many other events around the world that are not these characters. 

All the best.....

Daryl H

Rupert,
I started to write a nasty rebuttal to your post, which wrongly assumed I would be making copies of your Hodman and Sally, but thought better of it.

As Daryl said, the style of your walk around puppetry has been with us for many years. I was looking at that style and NOT the characters. The strong point of your show is the writing and delivering of that script through these interesting characters. Even without the puppets, which are not strong in the area of lip sync, anything used to deliver the dialog would still make a great show.

But, since you brought up the question of copying, doesn't it seem that these characters bear a strong resemblance to "Patsy" from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'? Hmmmm?

Cruppetman

his been doing these type of puppets for years

http://www.squashboxtheatre.co.uk/squash_box_gallery.html

john