Bermudian 'Fraggle Rock' creator Michael K. Frith and wife Kathy Mullen's semi-retirement would exhaust any normal people. They travel the world, work on various charity projects, and are creating a new puppet television show for India, among other things.

Mr. Frith is well-known for his work with the Muppets and was creator of 'Fraggle Rock', a television show in the 1980s that was inspired in part by Bermuda. Mr. Frith got his start right here in Bermuda at the age of 15, working for ZBM.

Ms Mullen, originally from Long Island, New York, is a one time principal performer with the 'Muppet Show'.

She is the No Strings writer and director. She well known for having performed many of the voices on 'Sesame Street', the Muppets, and 'Fraggle Rock', including Mokie the New Age Fraggle and was a voice in movies such as 'The Dark Crystal' and 'Between The Lions'.

Royal Gazette reporter Jessie Moniz recently visited the couple at their home in Salt Kettle, to talk about No Strings, the charity they co-founded with Irishman Johnie McGlade to save children from landmines and natural disasters.

"We are quasi retired although it depends on what is happening at any given moment," said Mr. Frith. "What that led us into was charity work.

"It has taken us to some interesting places. Generally, what we have been doing is reacting to the needs of different global communities."

After the bombings in Afghanistan a few years ago, charity worker Johnie McGlade went to the country with the British charity War Child.

"He was there building a bakery and feeding thousands of refugees on a daily basis for five months," said Ms Mullen. "He would take a puppet out into the field with him.

"It was some ratty old thing that someone had given him. He found that it attracted kids like magnets. They would just rush from everywhere. They wouldn't speak a lick of English, and he was just doing silly stuff with this thing. He didn't know anything about puppetry or television. He just knew it was working for him in the field."

But what Mr. McGlade really wanted to do was to use the puppets to get across vital messages to the children, such as how to avoid landmines. Many of the kids he saw were missing limbs due to stepping on them and bore horrific body scars.

When his puppet finally fell apart, a friend of his urged him to call Kathy Mullen.

"This was after 9/11 and Michael and I were looking for something to do especially with Afghanistan and especially with puppets," said Ms Mullen.

And so No Strings was born. The first film Mr. Frith and Ms Mullen helped to make for Afghanistan was called 'ChucheQhalin' or 'The Little Carpet Boy'.

It told the story of a little boy made of carpet whose destiny was to become a real boy, a bit like Pinocchio.

But Pinocchio never had to live in a world riddled by landmines and unexploded bombs. The movie helps to teach children about where it is safe to walk and play and where they must not go.

Shortly after the film was made, Mr. Frith and Ms Mullen visited Kabul, Afghanistan for themselves.

"Three days in Kabul for me was deeply disturbing and heart-breaking," said Mr. Frith. "It just wrenches you.

"These people live with things like landmines, every day."

While in Kabul, an undubbed copy of the film was shown to a group in a children's home.

"The children spoke no English, so a teacher was yelling out the story as the kids were watching it," said Mr. Frith. "Then they all got together afterward.

"The teacher said 'who remembers what you learned'. One little girl put up her hand, stood up and started talking. She talked for about ten minutes."

Kathy said: "We asked what is she saying? The teacher said, 'she has told you the entire story and every single thing that has happened from memory'.

"We were like, 'okay, I guess they got it'. They questioned the kids and they did get the safety aspects."

The mountainous terrain of Afghanistan presented some challenges to getting the film to its intended audience.

"They have been seeing it in Afghanistan for the last two years," said Mr. Frith. "They take it around on these little dirt bikes that Johnie got another charity to donate to us and we donated it to them.

"The sidecar opens up like a Swiss army knife. Out of it comes a big screen, a projector, a generator and the sound system. The bikes can get up into the mountains to these villages that until now only donkeys could get to."

After Afghanistan, Mr. Frith and Ms Mullen worked with three different charities to help prepare children in Indonesia for natural disasters such as Tsunamis and earthquakes.

"One of the problems is that in some places you have almost total illiteracy," said Ms Mullen. "So how do you get the word out, especially in areas where there is very little television and radio?

"You can't send them pamphlets because they can't read them. The latest thing they have tried is comic books."

In the film for Indonesia, a man lives in a little corrugated shack which is eventually swept away by a Tsunami.

"The hero is this bumbling guy," said Mr. Frith. "He does all the wrong things and his house gets swept away in the Tsunami.

"He is a wonderfully comic example of what not to do. There is a little girl who comes along and gets it all right."

Unfortunately, trying to make a puppet show for another country isn't as simple as one would think.

"Every culture has its own barriers, requirements, restrictions and its own way of looking at things," said Mr. Frith. "For example, we thought 'what would be a good animal to use as a character?' Well we said everyone loves dogs.

"The response we got back was 'Sorry in our country the dog is lower than the rat, but the rat is venerated.'

"How do you honour each and every culture? In a place like Indonesia there are something like 30 countries and so many religions and languages and ancient rivalries.

"The history is so deep and powerful that there is no way that a guy from Bermuda and a girl from Long Island are going to have the knowledge to pull it off. So we needed lots of help from people in those countries."

Even names proved very tricky. In one case, Ms Mullen was sent a list of names to choose from. She picked a funny sounding one.

Unfortunately, it was not until after the DVDs had been pressed and dubbed that anyone dared to mention that in one country, the name she picked was a nickname for a part of the body not referred to in polite company. We were like 'why didn't anyone say'.

"They had to go back and redub it," said Mr. Frith. "If the name they used was a problem they haven't told us. They are still too embarrassed."

But Ms Mullen said there are certain things that are common almost everywhere from Indonesia to Peru.

"Shacks with wood siding and corrugated roofs are common everywhere in the tropics," said Mr. Frith. "Almost everywhere people dress in T-shirts and baseball caps. Traditional clothing tends to be worn for special occasions.

"In the Indonesian film we used humanoid characters and we tried to represent the different ethnicities and religions. We used one here and one there. There was one lady with a Muslim head wrap, and one guy with a Muslim cap and one lady in a Balinese head wrap.

"We used sarongs on a lot of characters, but other characters were in baseball caps and T-shirts."

Efforts to make the film generic have paid off, because now with a little redubbing, the film is going to be shown in the Philippines and other countries. Mr. Frith and Ms Mullen hope to get the film to Earthquake-riddled Peru.

No Strings is an Irish charity which means it is not yet tax deductible for Americans. But Mr. Frith and Ms Mullen are hoping to fix that in the near future.

They are also working on a totally separate venture, a television puppet show for India called 'The Magic Tent'.

For more information about No Strings go to http://www.nostrings.org.uk/.