Currently streaming on Christian kids' service Minno, the puppet series Guillermo & Will -- a co-production of Family Theater Productions and Minno -- aims to bring the message of God's love to preschoolers ... via a pair of bilingual best-pal worms.
The worms explore the wonders of God's world, communicating in both Spanish and English, providing language lessons along with their adventures.
What Is the Message of Guillermo & Will?
The show is the creation of puppeteer and voice actress Donna Kimball, a 2024 Emmy Award-winner for her work on the Jim Henson Company's AppleTV series Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock. Click here to read our earlier interviews with Kimball, Minno CEO Erick Goss, and FTP producer Anne Yancey.
Kimball also performs Will, the English-speaking worm. To perform Spanish-speaking Guillermo, she turned to friend Dan Garza, whose long resume also includes working on Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.
But for Garza, a practicing Christian, the real appeal of working on Guillermo & Will was its message to preschoolers that God loves them.
I've puppeteered in front of corporate guys who were in charge of billions of dollars, and they turn into eight-year-olds when they start talking to this thing, a glorified sock on my hand, because they want to believe.
And I think that goes to our faith as well. And people want to believe that there is a God who's there with their best interest at heart, that there is a perfect father who is willing to embrace you regardless of your errors, of your foibles, of the times that you've fallen down.
But people don't realize how accessible it is until someone approaches them and says, "You know what, God loves you." They're like, "No, he doesn't. I got burned by the church." No, you know what, God loves you. Humankind, man will fail you time and time again, but God will never do that.
And the belief in something, the belief that you can talk to this sock puppet and it's making eye contact with you and your like, "I could have sworn I saw him blink." It didn't blink, man, it didn't blink.
Making Adventures for Small Kids in a Big World
According to Garza, the original idea for the series was that the little worms would have far-flung adventures around the world, from the pyramids to the Eiffel Tower. But a little shift in perspective changed that.
Garza recalls how that affected an episode on the stars:
An educator told us, said, "When you're a little kid, the grocery store is like you've traveled to another country. The park that's 10 minutes away walking from your home is a completely foreign place."
So, the fact that we're so small, and we're seeing the vastness of God's embrace, we're seeing the vastness of space, we're seeing the vastness of blessing and love, can sometimes be very scary.
And so, on one level, Will is so frightened that he's suffocating his friend as they're in space. And then Guillermo says, "We can do this together. You're not alone."
And again, it goes back to our relationship with God. I'm not alone. I'm not alone in this. And my fear, my doubt, all of those things through Scripture and through an understanding of how God works.
I heard a priest once say that the Bible, for as complex as it is, if we knew the truth of God and His plans for everyone, are very difficult texts, it's like a coloring book versus God's truth, which is so vast and complex. And so I carry that with me quite often.
After all, every human has one thing in common, as Garza points out:
Many things may be different about us. Guillermo is one color, and Will is another; cultural differences, language, economic differences, educational differences, where we are on the globe.
But the one thing that threads us all together is that God made us, all of us, regardless of what we believe in, regardless of what our inclinations are or what patterns we've learned growing up, God is the through-line in all of this.
We all are in His image, whether we believe it or not.
Guillermo & Will May Not Be for Everyone ...
Another theme of the show is being grateful to God for all the wonders of the world He created. Of course, not everyone in the world believes in God, but Garza likes that parents who do can put their preschoolers in front of Guillermo & Will and hear that message.
He says,
The teaching of the values that we have in our show, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying thank you to God. There is nothing wrong with treating your fellows as you would yourself.
There is nothing wrong with exploring joyfully, almost ridiculously at times, what we've been freely given by God.
Using Your Talents to Plant Seeds
Ultimately, Garza loves what he does for a living. But, he especially loves what utilizing his God-given talents enables him to do ... and the faith that allows him to trust in the outcome of his work.
He says,
I was talking to somebody the other day, and they're like, "Well, you're a puppeteer and this, that, and the other." I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no. My identity is a child of God. Who I am is a child of God. What I do is puppetry. What I do is illustration. What I do is voice work. What I do is writing. That's the fruit of my tree. But I can't produce good fruit if I don't know who I am."
There's a famous quote: "Don't expect to get a pear from an apple tree." I know who I am. I know what I can produce, and I know what God has been watering my tree with.
I choose to water with, theoretically, as far as I know, good water, hopefully producing good fruit. And whatever happens with the fruit, once it's off the tree and it's in a little box and it goes out into the world, God's going to handle that.
I have no worries about how God will handle the seeds that we plant in this world. I have no doubt that it's for the greater good.
Click here to learn more about Minno and Guillermo & Will -- and take a look at an episode:
Image: Minno/Family Theater Productions
Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.
'Fantasia' at 85: Classical Music (With Mickey Mouse & Dancing Hippos)
‘Sarah’s Oil’ Drills Down Into Inspiring, Little-Known U.S. History
Callings in Cinema: Films About Vocations
This Is Halloween: A Tim Burton Marathon
Keep up with Family Theater Productions on our website, Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.