Get ready to dive into the wonderfully weird world of "Krampus Gets Cramped," a puppet show that’s anything but ordinary! This playful piece, created by the talented Jim Julian, is part of the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival happening from March 25th to March 28th at the Mr. Roboto Project. Picture this: Krampus, the Christmas demon, finds himself in the bustling streets of 1970s New York, mingling with the likes of the iconic punk band, the Cramps. We’re talking cranky boxes, shadow puppets, and a wild mix of storytelling that’s sure to tickle your funny bone while making you question your holiday spirit. Grab your tickets for just 15 bucks and come experience the delightful chaos that ensues when naughty meets nice! You won’t want to miss out on this quirky fusion of art and hilarity that’s bound to leave you grinning from ear to ear!

Krampus Gets Cramped

Company: JIm Julien

Date(s): March 25, 2026 - March 28, 2026

Time(s): Various Times

Genre: Theatre

Venue: Mr. Roboto Project

https://pittsburghfringe.org/events/krampus-gets-cramped/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just can't not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom, and this is part of our preview for the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival.

I know this is outside of our typical Rochester and surrounding area content, but the fringe is universal and we're thrilled to partner with the Pittsburgh team for their 13th year running from March 19th to the 28th.

To learn more about all of the shows and get Tickets, go to pittsburghfringe.org Tickets cap out at just 20 bucks and a whole event ticket.

It's $150.

So make sure to get your tickets today and join the action over on Pen Ave. And I'm here with a guest.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

I am Jim Julian and I am one of the artists that is hoping to perform on Penn Avenue in a venue.

Yeah, and your show is Krampus Gets Cramped.

And that's over at the Mr. Roboto Project.

Shows are March 25th at 9:35pm, March 26th, 5:15, March 27th, 6:35, March 28th at 2:40.

You.

You can check all of that out@PittsburghFringe.org and tickets are $15.

So, Jim, why don't you tell me what is the whole.

What's the whole concept behind Krampus Gets Cramped?

How would you define this?

The genre is.

It's puppetry, everyone's favorite genre, puppetry.

And it is using a series of cranky boxes, which are storytelling machines where you have a scroll that moves past and there are images on that.

And this will tell the story of the myth of Krampus, who is the Christmas demon.

He's St. Nicholas's party partner who helps to I guess, bring consequences to bad deeds.

And he meets the Psycho Billy Band, the Cramps, and of course hilarity ensues and much mischief happens and stuff.

So I'm confused and delighted in at least equal measures.

And that description is so unbelievably fringe in basically every way something can be.

And I have so many directions to go down and I'm really excited.

So let's talk about.

First let's talk about the tech such that it is technology.

Why don't you tell me about, tell me about the crank boxes.

Cause to me that seems like almost rudimentary animation.

The kind of things it is.

It is a very old form.

Well, Reasonably old form of kind of storytelling.

And basically I'm using a series of boxes, wooden boxes that have cranks on the top of them and they move the scroll and advance the story.

Kind of like a very low tech television or comic strip that passes by.

And basically that's how I kind of tell my story.

I have a series of boxes because the roll of fabric that I use is so large for the whole show.

It's a 40, I think I timed it out about 47, 48 minutes long show.

To get all that fabric, I needed several boxes.

So I will be moving boxes off, putting boxes back on and.

And there are various elements of the thing.

But it is definitely a puppet show in that it's shadow puppets, there's light projected through, there's moving puppets that.

And then there's also static images that go back and forth.

Plus of course, because of the holidays and the cramps, there's music and sound effects and all sorts of things that go along with it.

For me, it's kind of a choreographed dance in performing it so well.

I mean, you're also, you're basically describing like, you know, film projectionist work that you're doing by change.

You're essentially changing reels during the show while you're also performing.

You're doing the act of moving.

The reason I brought up animation is that's kind of how old, like backgrounds were.

Like they were on a moving thing where the characters stayed static or relatively static and then the backgrounds were actually physically shifted behind them.

So you're doing, you're doing background animation, you're doing background work, you're doing the landscape, you're doing film, projectionism, projectionist, and you're performing all at the same time.

And there's a little rod puppetry thrown in there just for fun.

I mean, you don't want to be bored during a 50 minute show when you're doing so little.

Yeah, exactly.

If I was just sitting there just moving the cranks, it wouldn't be any fun for me.

So I've added a whole lot of extras into it.

So, I mean, I've asked this question a lot.

So when you were developing this show, what were all like, it seems just like you just jammed all of these interests all into one thing, which is great.

But when you were deciding like which elements of your, you know, obviously diverse passions were you going to put in this?

How did you start to distill that down into a show versus

yeah, yeah.

Well, it started out in many ways.

I've done puppetry and I've done shadow puppetry with a single screen and images that move around in it.

And, and a couple of years ago.

And I have seen other cranky artists, other cranky box artists over the years, shadow.

And they were always beautiful and lovely and there's, you know, there's actually a cranky puppetry festival in Baltimore every year.

And a lot of those artists I have seen over the years and really love their work.

But I had done.

Done a piece that had shadow puppetry and I decided to do a small cranky box as part of it.

And I noticed every time I brought out this little box and I started cranking it and it was a box based on the Marcel Duchamp's the Large Glass the Bride Stripped Bare.

I don't know if you're familiar with Duchamp's work in that.

Anyway, it's a large piece of artwork that's set in layered inside pieces of glass.

And it seemed to lend itself to a kind of a shadow puppet thing.

And I built it into a little cranky thing.

But every time I pulled that box out, audiences would all lean forward and really pay attention, like a TV suddenly came on or something.

And so I put that in the back of my head thinking, oh, I should do a full on cranky show of some kind.

And it happened that there is a phenomena of Krampus Notch around the world, but particularly in Austria and Bavaria and that sort of thing.

And apparently it has become very popular here in the States, in several cities.

It's December 5th.

People dress up as Krampus, they run around, they.

They make mayhem and mischief and all that sort of thing.

And it's a Christmas demon that almost becomes kind of the polar opposite of Santa Claus in many ways.

I think people have kind of a visceral, like there's too much sweetness in the Christmas holiday.

There needs to be kind of a palate cleanser.

And I think Krampus is that palate cleanser.

And I was thinking about that in terms of like, oh, I'd like to do.

To kind of explore how to tell a story.

And I thought Krampus would be a lovely character to kind of play off of.

And then it just happened that I was listening to a podcast of all things, if you can imagine that.

Oh God, I can't.

Of someone talking about some rock and roll history.

And they were talking about the Cramps and kind of what they went through in terms of getting.

Getting to New York and being part of the punk scene at CBGBs and how it was such a wild scene in the mid-70s.

And I've always liked the Cramps work.

You know, I really enjoyed their music and thought they were, you know, sleazy and sexy and naughty and kind of slimy and all the things that you enjoy and really bad rock and roll.

That's really great.

And suddenly it dawned on me, oh, well, they are the naughty children that Krampus really should punish.

So I decided to bring them all together in New York City and see what would happen.

And that's kind of where the story started and what I've played with here.

I love that.

So, I mean, and I always, you know, when I first read about, you know, when I first read about Krampus, you know, a long time ago, because all that, you know, the mythology thing really does intrigue me, that when you mentioned.

It's like kind of the polar opposite.

That's really the fundamental thing.

It is, you know, the consequence side.

But instead of bringing presents in a sack, he kidnaps children in a sack and might hit them with birch branches or something else.

Yeah.

Like, it's very much.

It's.

It's very like grim fairy tales, this.

It's not like modern.

Like, modern stories for children.

Like, these were stories that were supposed to terrify and horrify children for purposes of behavior and, you know, not getting on the bad side of everybody in their life, which was the style at the time.

Yeah.

And, you know, perhaps from time to time, we need to be reminded that there are consequences to bad actions.

Yeah.

Not that we have anybody in specifically in mind for, you know, maybe somebody who's following people who have bad behavior in their past or current, that we wouldn't mind having birch branches occur to said people.

Applied.

Yeah.

Yeah, true.

So, I mean, I always found that interesting.

Yeah.

We've seen movies, many of them solidly mediocre, but at least there was some interesting portrayals.

And bringing that concept to life has been a thing.

And what I'm kind of intrigued about is also, you know, this.

You mentioned the specific band.

It's a band I've heard of.

I'm not sure I know the music, but that scene was like the.

One of the most important scenes in music.

You know, one of my personal favorite bands, you know, Talking Heads, came out of that same scene at the same time in that mid-70s.

Is that like.

Is this your genre that you love, or are you kind of a diverse music head?

I'm diverse, but I did.

I have really enjoyed many of the groups, Talking Heads and the Ramones and many of the artists that came out of that kind of 70s punk scene.

And I'm old enough that I had been in New York in the mid-70s, and I proudly had visited CBGB's one time in a visit to New York and really was intrigued by how art and that kind of scene came out of kind of a visceral, you know, kind of understanding of, like, bad behavior, bad attitudes, a lot of.

And perhaps some bad musicianship, but striking in its kind of style and swagger and all of that.

And I found that whole scene to just be utterly fascinating.

And that's kind of what I thought.

And I have to say, always in my search for themes and ideas to play with in puppetry, I look for things that I've never seen.

I've never seen anything.

Any puppet shows based around that scene.

And I felt like, well, there's my sweet spot to kind of explore.

Well, and I think there's also.

There's that.

It's the kind of thing that basically can't exist in many ways nowadays was, you know, you could be in one of the major cities of the world and, you know, do essentially diy.

Like, that's DIY musicianship, right?

Like, that's not.

Yeah, this isn't high production.

This isn't high.

This.

It's high personality, it's high character, but it is not.

Like, this isn't like polished areas.

And you can.

You could have just done it because you were passionate weirdos of all different.

Of all different sides.

And that DIY attitude that has, you know, that's the kind of thing that I've really loved about work.

Doing fringe interviews is that DIY thing.

There's both the romantic and the grounded part of DIY is important.

The ability to experiment, the option to do something weird that is so much you.

That you have to bring that.

It's the name of the show for a reason.

You just can't not Right.

Yeah.

And having that opportunity without having to, you know, drop tons of money into something or have representation or, like, not have, you know, capital to do rent or anything like that, there's something really special about that DIY vibes.

Is that something you find yourself?

Like, is that part of you as well?

Oh, very much so.

I really.

I like, you know, kind of the.

The raw aesthetics of.

Of that and.

And puppetry is an ancient form, but it has.

It's have so many permutations of.

Of, you know, elegance and rawness and bawdiness and.

And sophistication and all that.

And And I feel like right now is kind of a golden age of puppetry.

I, I, you know, over the years I have met a lot and throughout the country and overseas and that sort of thing.

And I feel like this is really a wonderful time for puppeteers to explore all sorts of genres, types of puppetry, ways of telling stories.

And I think it's lovely.

I mean it's very underground.

I, I feel like it pops its head up occasionally in popular culture, but it's kind of just chugging away out there.

There are lots of puppeteers, particularly in the fringe festival kind of scene.

A lot of puppeteers are working in it.

It's something my thing.

I can pack up a series of boxes in the back of a car and trudge them around to festivals and go places with.

Definitely provide to kind of take that storytelling medium and go places with it that maybe if you had a huge dance company or a band with lots of effects and instruments and all that, you're not quite as portable to that.

And I really enjoy the.

I usually perform in smaller venues.

I really build them for small venues.

And the venue that I have in Pittsburgh at the Mr. Roboto is just perfect for this sort of thing.

It's a small music venue that normally has bands and musicians play at.

And I'm really looking forward to being there because the ability to look out and have eye contact with your audience and, and to play together in a room with a fairly small group is really part of the joyful part of it all for me.

No, absolutely.

And it's very interesting.

This is the second interview I've done so far that centered around puppetry in one form or another.

The first one was a lady named Jessica who's doing a 30 minute production of Jaws with puppets, which made me just delighted me in like every way possible.

And something I mentioned on that one, I'm gonna use kind of the same phrasing is there's something about puppetry that is, you know, both timeless like you mentioned, but it really forces people to be really present with things.

And that for, I don't know, it's, it's hard to, I'm not sure how to define it.

I'm kind of intrigued on your thought on this is that seems like people have this emotional resonance with puppetry in a way that's kind of hard to define.

Like an example I ran across recently was somebody was.

You went to.

I think it was a Jim Henson exhibit and they just saw, you know, just puppets just seeing.

It was like a Kermit puppet.

And you could see people just laughing and weeping.

You know, outside of that, like that it just has this visceral emotion.

And also in the home of Pittsburgh, you see, you know, more rudimentary form of puppetry.

But you see like what Mr. Rogers did with simple finger puppets.

But there's no doubt that the people who watch that, the kids, but also the adults that watch that those characters existed, they were inhabited by the performers.

And even the, even those rudimentary versions carried such import to the people who, who resonated with that.

Why do you.

Is there like some.

What do you, what do you think about that?

How would you say that exists?

It's a fascinating alchemy of kind of, you know, you can take fabric and cardboard and, you know, a stick or something, and suddenly it becomes a full, very rich character.

A person that people really put a lot of emotional energy into.

And it's fascinating to me, the process, you know, I am always blown away.

I have seen over the years a number of.

There's a Japanese.

Well, it's been kind of brought across all sorts of things.

But Bunraku, which is basically a style of, of puppetry where the characters are manipulated by a number of actors, usually all in black or some.

Somewhere where it's the, the, the puppeteer is diminished somewhat.

So you, you focus on the, the puppet and the character.

But the fact that you're very aware there's a puppeteer or, and sometimes a group of puppeteers manipulating a character in full view of everybody, and yet you still want to see the character, the puppet as having, as being a distinct individual and not necessarily just being manipulated by a crowd dressed in black behind it and stuff.

And that to me is fascinating, I think.

And if I can use my really low level psychology 101 and stuff, I think because humans are so quick to imbue inanimate objects and animate objects with human personality, human characteristics and all that, the fact that we can turn a ping pong ball on a stick into a living character just says that it's a human need to see pattern and to see a human reflection back at us in some way.

You know, we want to believe that our dog looks at us in the same way we look at it, you know, And I think that's part of it.

I mean, it's fascinating.

And it's one of the things that brings me back to puppetry again and again, because it's almost a mystical experience, not to make it too deep and spiritual.

But it is kind of a slightly mystical experience and that you see how very simple things can become very complex, very profound, very deep.

You know, it has value that you just.

It's quite striking and it's lovely and.

But I.

But I don't think I truly understand the phenomena, but I.

But I'm more than happy to play with it.

Well, I think that's also part of the delight is you don't have to understand everything to be delighted by it, to perform it, to engage with it as a practice.

What I'm kind of intrigued about, it seems like, you know, not to, like, pigeonhole you a little bit.

It seems like you like creating these experiences for people through the fringe, and it seems like you've been a part of different fringe festivals in the past.

What is it about fringe to you that is important in today's.

You know, today's media and, you know, media and everything.

Landscape of what can be distilled into the very poor term content?

How do you.

How do you feel that fringe is important in that whole landscape?

I mean, my feeling is.

And this has been the experience that I've had at most of the fringe festivals, either I've performed in or I was an audience member in, and all that is that it is live performance.

You know, it's definitely.

You know, you're in a space, there's something going on that it may be immersive, it may be kind of an environmental experience.

It could be a very defined theatrical experience, or music or dance or, you know, whatever, a variety of things.

But it is performed live in a space.

And that part seems like that is the satisfying element of it that maybe just watch.

I mean, I love going to films, I watch a lot of TV shows, I love radio, all that.

But there's something about being in a space and seeing a live performance

with

people doing it that just is something that's quite unique.

And because the fringe kind of.

Well, maybe not mandate, but the fringe mission is to promote artists to try something that really pushes outside of what is kind of commonplace or it's experimental.

It really asks artists to kind of explore the outer edges of kind of their imaginations and their talents and that sort of.

And I think seeing that played out, and especially because the festival, you know, over a certain amount of time, you get a chance to see a whole lot of things compacted into one week or weekend, and it's just fascinating.

And that part of it, I think, is really the lovely part of the fringe thing.

I know that, you know, oftentimes I have people ask me, oh, you're doing a fringe festival, or what's a fringe festival?

And trying to explain it is tough.

You go, well, it's pretty much everything.

But I do feel like the fringe.

The fringe.

I don't know if the mission, promise, mandate, values, the culture, whatever it is, is just something that really encourages artists to kind of be more than maybe they start out at.

And that's the thrilling part for me.

I mean, it definitely.

It pushes me to think about, how can I make this?

How can I push this out?

How can I make the audience.

How can I surprise an audience?

You know, like, what can I do that?

They're gonna go, oh, I never saw that before.

Or, you know, kind of, you know, jump around in genres and styles and that sort of thing and see if, you know, and if maybe there's thematic things that I can play with that intrigue me and they'll intrigue an audience member that's part of it too.

Well, and I love that.

And I think you will be intrigued if you go see Krampus gets cramped over at the Mr. Roboto Project.

March 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th.

Get all the times on PittsburghFinish.org as well as your tickets.

Jim, is there anywhere else that you'd want people to follow you for whatever other creative aspects you have going on?

I don't have a dedicated website, which is probably a fault of mine, but I do have an Instagram jbatman828 that I often place, things that I'm doing and activities that I'm involved in, and occasionally pictures of my dog.

So nothing wrong with that.

So thank you so much for joining, Jim.

And if you want to check out other shows on the Lunchadore Podcast Network, some of our things are local to Rochester, but other things are more universal.

So check.

Go to lunch order.org to check out all of the shows.

And I hope to see you out on the fringe coming up on March 19th through the 28th in the heart of Pittsburgh.

And we'll see out there.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

Ow.

It's a krampus.